Sagres Energy Inc has surrendered its interest in an oil and gas exploration license in Guyana.

The Canada-based international oil and gas exploration company announced this week the disposition of its 25 per cent interest in a petroleum prospecting licence for a 7,800 km oil-and-gas exploration block in the Takutu Basin in Central Guyana.

Sagres held its stake of the licence for two years, acquiring it on October 30, 2009 pursuant to a “farm-in’ agreement with Canacol Energy.

“Sagres Guyana has entered into a Quitclaim, Surrender and Assignment of Interest Agreement with Canacol Guyana according to which Sagres Guyana agreed to dispose of all of its rights, interests and obligations in the Guyana Block as well as pay Canacol Guyana US$412,500 on or before December 31, 2012,” Sagres said in a press release.

Canacol Guyana will assume all of the obligations of Sagres Guyana related to the Guyana Block, it said.

Sagres will now focus its attention on evaluating and developing the company’s assets in Colombia and Jamaica, where it was in February granted a four months extension to get an investment partner on board its oil exploration work on three blocks off the country’s shores.

The firm, which operates in Jamaica through its subsidiary Rainville Energy, had already received a nine-month extension from the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) last March.

That gave it until December 15 to decide whether to proceed with phase two of exploration work, which consists of completing a detailed analysis and drilling one well in each block along an 8,800 square kilometres stretch of shallow water (less than 30 metres) offshore St Elizabeth.

Following the granting of the most recent extension, the company said it was in discussions with several parties about a farm-in agreement, in which the new partner would assist with development costs. When asked if it was likely that the company would be able to secure a deal by the new deadline, Sagres CEO Gary Wine said: “There is never enough time but it’s what we have to work with.”

Sagres announced last year that the blocks had a “seismic bump” that could have substantial amounts of hydrocarbons – three billion barrels – based on an independent evaluation of the resource potential prepared by Chapman Petroleum Engineering.

The minimum exploration work commitments under each of the production sharing agreements are divided into two phases. The first phase involved the acquisition and processing of 2,458 km of two-dimensional seismic data over blocks nine, 13 and 14 offshore Jamaica, which is basically gathered by sailing a survey ship along a straight line, towing a ‘streamer’ – an eight-kilometre long fibre optic cable containing hundreds of ultra-sensitive listening devices called hydrophones.