Upland Resources
Is 2026 finally the year of UPL?
Good Morning Team.
In small cap investing, one must be aware of Schrödinger’s jam.
This is the theory that a small cap stock which has promised jam tomorrow for years — always just one catalyst away, or perhaps quarter from the inflection point — exists in a superposition of ‘finally delivering’ and ‘perpetually almost delivering.’
This time, it looks like the lid is about to be wrenched open.
But until that moment arrives, the Upland cat remains simultaneously both alive and dead.
What remains true, however, is that the size of the potential prize is virtually unmatched.
Let’s consider.
Starting Point: Patience
The first half of 2025 was, by Upland’s own description, a period of executing strategy rather than making headlines.
The Company posted a consolidated loss of £1.1 million for the six months ended 30 June 2025 — entirely unremarkable for an explorer at this stage — while cash actually increased by £1.7 million during the period, largely from warrant and option exercises.
In other words, the financial foundations were being reinforced while the technical work continued.
The core focus was Sarawak - specifically Block SK334 - an onshore block in Malaysian Borneo that the Company has long described as ‘a transformational opportunity.’
To earn that label, Upland completed a Joint Technical Study with PETROS, the Sarawak state petroleum authority, confirming significant technical and commercial potential, underpinned by promising subsurface data and the always-welcome proximity to existing infrastructure.
In exploration, having a pipeline nearby is a bit like finding out there’s already a road to your holiday cottage. It doesn’t guarantee a good holiday, but it certainly helps.
Alongside Sarawak, the Company was knocking on Brunei’s door.
On 8 May 2025, Upland received formal acknowledgement from the Petroleum Authority of Brunei confirming its interest in Block L — a procedural milestone, yes, but an important one.
Separately, Upland Big Oil, the joint venture vehicle in which Upland holds a 45% stake, was shortlisted for Brunei’s 2025 offshore shallow water bidding round. Being shortlisted is not the same as winning — but it’s a signal that the authorities regard the team as credible.
Further credibility? In May 2025, Chairman Bolhassan Di led a three-day technical and commercial workshop in Kuala Lumpur, bringing together prospective partners and the Joint Technical Study team. The delegation then travelled onward to Brunei for further stakeholder discussions.
This is the name of the game - flying economy, sitting in conference rooms and building the relationships that eventually, hopefully, translate into licence awards.
Bolhassan Di put it plainly at the time:
‘The company is greatly encouraged by the recent development in Malaysia and Brunei. Considerable effort has been made by the entire team. We look forward to updating the market appropriately on developments which have been years in the making.’
Years in the making.
You don’t say.
But it hints at something that would become increasingly clear as 2025 progressed — that Upland’s apparent quiet was not inactivity, but preparation.
Board Gets Stronger
In February 2025, Upland appointed Dr Razak Damit as a Non-Executive Director — and if you’re going to operate in Brunei and Sarawak, having someone who spent a significant career at Brunei Shell Petroleum on your board is rather useful.
Dr Damit contributed to the development of the offshore billion-barrel Champion West field and helped unlock major discoveries including the north flank of the Seria Field, adding 120 million barrels of oil.
He also served as Country Manager for PetroleumBRUNEI, leading successful entries into Myanmar, Malaysia and Canada. This is a man who knows where the oil is and, crucially, who to call about it.
Then, in February 2026, Upland added Dr Ngakan Alit Ascaria to its Technical Committee — a petroleum geoscientist with more than 35 years of experience, currently serving as a senior adviser to Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and SKK Migas, and a Senior Lecturer at the prestigious Institut Teknologi Bandung.
Dr Ascaria has worked at Repsol, Talisman Energy, Premier Oil, Pertamina, Conoco and BP, and holds a PhD from University College London.
He was named Pertamina’s Geoscientist of the Year in 2000. In other words, Upland is not short of people who know their carbonates from their clastics.
October 2025: Enter Vanguard — and Josh Galloway
If the first half of 2025 was about technical groundwork, October marked the moment Upland started acquiring the tools to actually drill something.
On 1 October 2025, the Company signed an Asset Acquisition Agreement with Vanguard Drilling Limited — acquiring Vanguard’s proprietary intellectual property, its advanced drilling management systems, and integrating select senior personnel into Upland’s operational structure.
More importantly, Vanguard’s CEO Josh Galloway joined Upland as Head of Drilling Services, leading the creation of Upland Borneo Drilling Services (UBDS), operating under the Upland Big Oil umbrella.
What did Upland actually acquire? Two things worth understanding.
First, the Vanguard Business Management System — a comprehensive drilling safety and operations platform including drilling manuals, risk frameworks and competency development modules.
Second, Mission Control, a Salesforce-based AI project management suite providing real-time oversight of costs, schedules and logistics.
For a company preparing to operate in remote locations across Southeast Asia, having battle-tested systems rather than spreadsheets and hope is probably going to be important.
The consideration was structured as performance-based milestone payments, aligning Vanguard’s long-term rewards with Upland shareholders. Since 2017, Vanguard has operated a fleet of onshore LOC rigs — including the Huisman LOC 400 #6 — a high-specification compact drilling unit under consideration for Upland’s forthcoming work programmes.
Binding contracts on all of this were executed by 24 October 2025.
Galloway, who had been working closely with the Upland team for over a year before formally joining, was direct about why the opportunity excited him:
‘Vanguard has always prided itself on operational discipline and safety leadership. Integrating with Upland allows us to apply those strengths on a larger scale, in some of the most exciting growth markets in the world. I have also participated in a number of constructive engagements with regulators and government representatives, which has reinforced the strong alignment between Upland and its stakeholders.’
The strategic logic here is underappreciated. UBDS creates a scalable regional service business that can offer drilling services to third parties in exchange for project equity.
It’s a way of building a portfolio without always writing a large cheque upfront.
November 2025: Lost Soldier
This is the potential game changer.
Upland has entered into a Strategic Partnership and Framework Agreement with Lost Soldier Oil and Gas II Master Series LLC.
The agreement established a bilateral investment of approximately $8.6 million — structured as a mutual stock subscription — and laid the foundation for Lost Soldier to participate in Upland’s Southeast Asian assets through farm-in arrangements.
On the Upland side:
Lost Soldier subscribed for £3.3 million of new Upland shares at 3.3p per share, subject to a 12-month lock-up.
On the Lost Soldier side: Upland invested approximately $4.3 million into Lost Soldier’s private placement, gaining direct exposure to the Wild Mustang Federal Unit in Wyoming — a gas development that its backers regard as one of the largest unconventional gas discoveries in the western United States in four decades, with estimated resources of approximately 6 trillion cubic feet.
Six trillion cubic feet is not a small discovery.
For context, it would take the United Kingdom roughly two years to consume that much gas. Whether the full resource is ultimately recoverable is, as always, the question — but the scale of ambition is clear.
Lost Soldier’s CEO Marc Bruner previously founded Ultra Petroleum, which grew to a market capitalisation exceeding $7 billion and was instrumental in developing the 49 Tcf Pinedale-Jonah Fields in Wyoming.
He also founded Pennaco Energy, sold to Marathon Oil for approximately $550 million, and Falcon Oil & Gas, which reached a valuation above $3.7 billion.
If that’s not worth a punt, what is?
Bruner was candid about what drew him to Upland’s Southeast Asian portfolio:
‘We are excited by the scale, revenue potential, and long-term prospects of Upland’s Southeast Asian opportunities and the exclusive position Upland have secured. This partnership synergises our experience in large-scale unconventional gas development alongside Upland’s high-quality targets. We look forward to advancing these projects and generating sustainable, long-term value for both companies and their shareholders.’
In January 2026, Marc Bruner was formally appointed as Strategic Investment Advisor to Upland.
His indirect 6% shareholding in Upland via Lost Soldier ensures his interests are firmly aligned with those of ordinary shareholders.
The man who’s made billions has skin in the game.
January 2026: $100 Million
The Framework Agreement was followed on 23 January 2026 by a formal Letter of Commitment from Wild Mustang Midstream LLC confirming its intention to make available $100 million to support Upland’s upstream activities across Southeast Asia between 2026 and 2030.
That’s chunky.
The cash will be deployed through asset-level farm-in arrangements, supporting an exploration and appraisal programme of up to ten wells across Sarawak, Brunei and Indonesia.
The opportunities being assessed comprise in excess of 5 billion barrels of oil equivalent in gross unrisked prospective and 2C contingent resources.
Bolhassan Di framed the significance:
‘Securing access to long-term, project-aligned funding significantly enhances our ability to progress high-impact exploration and appraisal opportunities in a disciplined and phased manner.’
Bruner, for his part, was equally direct about the confidence behind the commitment:
‘We see Upland as a technically capable and regionally focused partner with a compelling portfolio and exclusive opportunities across Southeast Asia. Our commitment reflects confidence in the quality of the identified prospects, the scale of the resource potential and Upland’s disciplined approach to exploration and development.’
To put that in perspective: Upland’s market capitalisation at time of writing is a fraction of that resource potential.
The gap between market cap and prospective resource value is, of course, precisely where exploration risk lives — but it also illustrates why early-stage investors find this company interesting.
February 2026: Portfolio Expansion - Borneo, Sumatra and Aceh
February was a busy month.
On 17–18 February, Upland announced the successful completion of a £2 million placing at 3.5p per share (good timing given the later impact of the Iran War).
The headline, however, was not the size of the raise — it was who participated.
Directors, executives, senior management and the geological team put in approximately £1.5 million of that £2 million themselves. Four external strategic investors contributed the remaining £500,000.
Again, skin in the game.
The proceeds are being directed toward two new high-impact onshore licence opportunities under exclusive negotiation:
Kalimantan, Borneo (Kutei Basin): A substantial onshore joint study area spanning more than 4,000 km², within a basin that has historically yielded 3.9 billion barrels of recoverable oil and 64 trillion cubic feet of gas across 139 commercial fields.
A 2024 SKK Migas assessment estimates more than 500 million 2C barrels of oil in place (P50) and more than 1.5 trillion cubic feet of gas in place within the contract area alone. The block benefits from over 900 km of existing 2D seismic data.
Northern Sumatra: An onshore block under exclusive and direct negotiation, in a basin where recent assessments support a yet-to-find resource potential exceeding 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The North Sumatra Basin has attracted significant interest from supermajors, and Upland’s Chairman notes that the Company is entering at an early and advantageous stage.
Also on 26 February, Upland signed a Memorandum of Understanding with PEMA — the Aceh provincial government-owned energy and mineral investment authority — for participation in Block MY1 and Block MY2 in Aceh Province.
Block MY1 contains an existing discovered accumulation that previously tested at approximately 25 MMscf/d, with publicly stated recoverable resource estimates of 100–400 Bcf.
The broader Tamiang Sub Basin has stated yet-to-find resources of 1.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent, with preliminary internal assumptions targeting a production ramp-up to approximately 20,000 boe/d over five years.
Aceh sits within one of Southeast Asia’s historically most productive hydrocarbon provinces, home to the supergiant Arun Gas Field and more recently multi-trillion cubic foot deepwater discoveries by Mubadala and Harbour Energy.
Bolhassan Di was characteristically measured:
“We…are now entering a transformational phase for Upland. The scale of the Blocks is exceptional for a company our size, and the Northern Sumatra opportunity further expands our basin-wide upside in one of Indonesia’s most prospective underexplored regions, now drawing marked interest from super-majors.’
March 2026: Wyoming, Wall Street and More Capital
March delivered three rapid-fire announcements that underline the pace at which Upland is now operating.
On 6 March, Upland and Lost Soldier formalised a Bilateral Options Agreement providing Upland with the option to invest up to $9.5 million in Lost Soldier’s Master Series, exercisable at its discretion until 31 December 2030.
Crucially, Upland is the only publicly listed entity with exposure to the Wild Mustang Federal Unit.
First commercial gas sales from Wild Mustang are targeted for Q4 2026, providing near-term cash flow potential in a geopolitically stable jurisdiction — not always a given when your core portfolio is in Southeast Asia.
On 17 March 2026, Upland announced another successful $1,750,000 fundraising through direct subscription by a small group of US-based private investors — 42.4 million new shares at 3.1p per share. The significance here is less the absolute amount and more the direction of travel: American investors are beginning to seek out this story.
That interest was validated the very next day, on 18 March 2026, when Upland announced approval to trade on the OTCQB Venture Market in the United States under the ticker UPLLF. The Company now trades in both London (UPL) and New York (UPLLF), giving US investors direct dollar-denominated access to Upland’s portfolio for the first time.
The key takeaway here is that US investors seeking exposure to Wild Mustang can only do so through UPL - and as sales come closer, FOMO may well kick in during early H2.
The Portfolio Today
Stepping back from the timeline, here is what Upland has assembled:
Sarawak (Block SK334): Core asset. Joint Technical Study completed with PETROS confirming material technical and commercial potential. Farm-in discussions ongoing. Adjacent to Brunei Block L.
Brunei (Block L / Brunei 2025 Bidding Round): Formal acknowledgement received from the Petroleum Authority of Brunei. Upland Big Oil shortlisted for the 2025 offshore shallow water round. Engagement continues.
Kalimantan, Borneo (Kutei Basin JSA): Over 4,000 km², SKK Migas-assessed 2C resources of 500+ million barrels of oil and 1.5+ Tcf gas. Under exclusive negotiation. Discovered Resource Opportunity designation means a ready-to-develop pathway already exists.
Northern Sumatra: Yet-to-find basin potential exceeding 9 billion boe. Under exclusive negotiation. Drawing interest from supermajors.
Aceh, Indonesia (Blocks MY1 and MY2): MoU signed with PEMA. Block MY1 has existing discovered accumulations and infrastructure. 20,000 boe/d production ambition over five years.
Wild Mustang Federal Unit, Wyoming (via Lost Soldier): 6 Tcf estimated resource. First gas targeted Q4 2026. Near-term cash flow exposure. Upland is the only public company with exposure to this asset.
The operational backbone is Upland Borneo Drilling Services, armed with Vanguard’s systems and personnel, providing in-house execution capability rather than reliance on third-party operators for every well.
Why the First PSC Could Be the Catalyst That Changes Everything
Upland has spent four years building a position that most investors haven’t yet priced in.
To understand what a PSC award could mean for the share price, it’s worth looking at how the market currently values comparable companies.
Consider Rockhopper Exploration (LSE: RKH), which carries a market capitalisation of approximately £620 million — with no oil flowing, significant debt, and a timeline of three or more years to first production in a jurisdiction that has proven deeply challenging from a regulatory and political standpoint.
The asset underpinning that valuation? Approximately 300 million net 2C barrels. That implies a market valuation of roughly £2 per 2C barrel.
Now apply that same metric to Upland.
The Kalimantan block alone carries a SKK Migas-assessed 2C oil resource of over 500 million barrels — already in excess of Rockhopper’s entire resource base that supports a £642 million market cap.
And that is just one of several prospects in Upland’s pipeline. The North Sumatra basin has yet-to-find potential exceeding 9 billion barrels. The Aceh blocks sit in a basin with over 8.6 billion barrels of discovered in-place resources.
Add Wild Mustang’s 6 Tcf of gas — and Upland is the only listed vehicle through which public market investors can access it.
Onshore Southeast Asian wells are also, as a general rule, a fraction of the cost of offshore wells in frontier Atlantic jurisdictions. Lower drilling costs mean the capital required to prove up resources is proportionally smaller — which means the value inflection per dollar spent is potentially far higher.
The setup, then, is this: Upland currently trades at a market capitalisation that reflects none of its 2C resources and a heavily discounted view of its prospective resources.
The moment a PSC lands — particularly on the Kalimantan block, where 2C resources are already assessed — the company will re-rate.
Bruner, who has seen this pattern more than once in his career, summed up the bull case with characteristic directness:
‘Lost Soldier has significant experience in the appraisal and development of unconventional resources and stacked gas horizons across multiple basins. The geological characteristics and multi-layered play systems present across Upland’s portfolio make this an exceptionally attractive opportunity.’
Four years of careful groundwork. A $100 million funded drill programme waiting to be deployed. A portfolio of 500 million barrel-plus prospects. An in-house drill team. And in several cases, no competing bidder for the licence.
The clock is running, and the first PSC could be closer than the share price currently suggests.
What to Watch For
Wild Mustang, Q4 2026. First gas is a hard date with infrastructure now under active development. This would represent Upland’s first exposure to actual production cash flow — a meaningful shift for any explorer.
PSC awards in Southeast Asia. Farm-in negotiations in Sarawak, Kalimantan and Indonesia are at advanced stages. Formal award of the Kalimantan JSA or the Sumatra block would be significant catalysts — and, as argued above, potentially transformative for the share price.
Brunei. The Petroleum Authority of Brunei operates on its own timeline — as all sovereign authorities do — but the depth of Upland’s engagement, reinforced by Dr Damit’s network and years of technical work, positions the Company well.
The OTCQB listing. The appetite from US investors shown in the March fundraising is early but encouraging. As the Wild Mustang story develops and Southeast Asian licences progress, a broadening North American shareholder base could provide additional liquidity and valuation support.
The Bottom Line
Upland Resources is, at its core, a story about disciplined technical work in one of the world’s most prospective and under-explored hydrocarbon regions — combined with a series of well-constructed partnerships that have, in the space of roughly 12 months, enhanced its financial firepower, operational capability and geographic reach.
Of course, it is not without risk.
Licence awards are not guaranteed.
Farm-in negotiations can stall.
Exploration wells, even in prolific basins, can disappoint. The Wild Mustang project, for all its promise, is still a development-stage asset.
These are the normal risks of frontier exploration, and any investor should weigh them carefully. This is a risk stock to be considered as part of a wider portfolio.
But with oil racing ahead, there’s nothing else of this potential growth scale on the Main Market.
Watch this space.