Member Info for adoubleuk

ifonly1,

"A million airline pilots in usa i doubt it sunshine."

OK, try 827,000. But even that was out of date. A quick google-look. And seemingly the industry is unable at present to recruit enough newcomers to replace the retirees.

Bit like the oilpatch.

Go search if you don't believe me.

DC,

"adoubluk
page 4
blocks 205/14(part) & 205/19
and
206/11d & 206/16a"

Yes. But it's a re-direct to a pdf. Carrying a Google header before one clicks to open the document. So there's no direct link to OGA.

And if you go to OGA direct, there's no mention of those blocks, nor of Spark Exploration.

This is why I'm now very dubious about this news.

Bolstered by a telephone call I made to an ex-poster here, our old friend PiJoe. (Still banned by LSE, by the way. Posts very occasionally on Lemonfool using the same moniker. Still looks at the other BB's including this one 'for entertainment'. Which I can understand.)

PiJoe is also ex-Enterprise. But the names of Sparks' Directors rang no bells with him. But that shouldn't be necessarily a cause for concern, because PiJoe was with Enterprise even before Dr T, who was never a 'staff' employee, anyway.

The oilpatch is a small place.

Biffa,

I agree with what you're saying, but am still continuing to come up with some very odd results in this Cleudo game.

"Frankly I'd be amazed if HUR bid for this acreage."

I suggest yougo back and check if it was ever on offer.

Go to google and type in 'OGA 30th licence round awards'. It'll redirect you to a downloadable pdf which bears an OGA header. And Spark is mentioned.

However, go directly to the OGA website, do a few dropdown menu searches for those licence blocks, and they don't exist!

OK, maybe it's me. Maybe my websearch skills have deteriorated and I've become a gibbering madman. Please put me back on the tracks.

But there's something definitely 'odd' about this entire story. From being a slight suspicion, I now think there's someone flying a drone over our runway...

Still on this. Doing some googling. Checking out OGA and the latest licence issue awards. And coming up with some very odd results. Likewise googling 'Prospex 2018'.

Not drawing any conclusions yet. But something doesn't ring quite right...

yuyus,

"Well I’ve looked on ASX exchange , nothing !"

Not surprising. They're privately-funded, seemingly.

https://sparkexploration.com/

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10905745/officers

"Spark Exploration is funded by a strong shareholder base including specialist resource funds and a leading global financial institution." (quote from the company site. but the 'leading investor' isn't named. Compare / contrast with Siccar Point.)

Call me paranoid if you like, but there's still a thought lurking in me that this Spark may be a Boojum.

yuyus,

" I find the Spark news very strange , be it’s location , assets , nomenclature, just odd"

That makes two of us...

DC,

"The name connection is obvious. It is certainly no coincidence."

Not obvious at all. But thanks a million for the link! Another little piece in the puzzle...

Irene,

"Could you read that as some sort of vindication of Hurricane and Dr Trice ?"

Yes

" In other words would BP being doing this if it wasn't for the work done by Hurricane?"

No. It's simply an example of BP being two-faced as always. Or at least since the days when they called themselves British Petroleum. It's a reason I refuse to refuel my car at one of their petrol stations. On basic principles.

Robbie,

"Does Dr T does know the geologists at Spark and have been any conversations, either pre or post licence award?"

I have no 'inside information' about this, but would say it's a 110% certainty.

The oilfield is (at a certain level) a very small place. A tight-knit 'global family'. Worldwide, excluding Russia, the USA and China, there are only about 10,000 people doing the job I used to do. Compare this with commercial airline pilots: there are close on a million in the USA alone. Worldwide? Millions.

Geologists on the board of oil companies? Exclude the USA again, and there may be a few hundred. And they'll all know each other, if not personally, at least at a 'peer' level. And geologists being geologists, they chat and exchange information like crazy.

Plus don't forget the 'Enterprise Connection'. Those people are thicker than thieves. And their tentacles are wide-reaching.

Of course Trice knows the Spark people. I wouldn't be at all surprised if (via his OGA contacts) he might not have been instrumental in their obtaining the block. Sometimes it's not what you know, but who you know which counts.

shedful,

"One problem I have got my old RR has that mini cassette deck cant find nowt anywhere."

So did my 'old old' RR. So I bought a Pioneer 12-disc CD player, bolted it into the rear loadspace (plenty of room!) and wired it into the existing stereo. Not difficult.

(Poor 'old' RR. Much modified, but the bloke who bought it turned out to be an idiot who thought that the offroad modifications meant the car was indestructable. I saw it from time to time afterwards and the damage inflicted on it was heartbreaking.)

My 'newer' (14-year old) L322 has a similar 6 CD changer as factory-fit. Though the smaller capacity is a pain: I've bought two extra 'magazines', but they cost 20 quid a pop.

The car bristles with loudspeakers everywhere, though (it's 'top of the range', pardon pun), and the amp powerful enough to make one deaf if one doesn't already have problems of that sort. But equally, there's a function whereby the screen folds down, and behing it is hidden a cassette-player!

I possess very few cassettes these days, but one can buy plugin devices to convert a cassette-player to read MP3 music files from a USB drive.

Unlike Wellwell (obviously a 'modernist') I like my music to be on a standalone memory format, not 'streamed'. Vinyl, CD, or USB. Or (very occasionally) cassette!

Just for once, I agree with Wellwell. And also I'm unsure as to whether Hurricane even put in any bids at all in the 30th licencing round. I have a suspicion that doing so would have merited an RNS, though could be wrong about that.

Equally I'm pretty ignorant about how licences are divvied-up to the various bidders, but believe (could be wrong again) it's not just on a financial basis, but also 'merit' comes into it. What the bidder actually intends to do with the block. Plus a further aspect of 'fairness', giving newcomers an equal slice of the pie.

This 'Spark thing' comes as a complete surprise, in much the same way as the Spirit deal did. But there again, until about 18 months ago, who the hell had even heard of Siccar Point (other than a bunch of birdwatchers, of course)?

It's still sinking in, slowly. Plus some real curiosity about some names. Myself and others have noticed the Bader connection. Plus Buzz and Ginger further north make me feel someone's been reading too many Biggles books. But what about 'Screwball', to the West of Bader? What's that all about? Another condensate / gassy thing like Whirlwind?

Plus (the paranoid Adoubleuk emerges...) there's a tiny fraction of a percent of my thinking saying the whole thing might be 'fake news', some sort of incredibly elaborate hoax, dreamed up by persons unknown for reasons unfathomable. I'm trying to keep that thought down, and under control, but it hasn't completely disappeared yet.

But Christmastime is a good season for mystery stories! Now then, was it Professor Mustard with the lead pipe in the billiard room or...

Snail,

"so really the fat lady isn't even in the auditorium yet."

And I like that! But hang on, maybe she is... hiding out amongst the audience, incognito. But that doesn't bother me. What we're waiting on is for her to get up on the stage. And when she hits the first high note is when the sweepstake'll be decided.

I have it on good information that the concert will be a long one...

Thanks, Detective Dosh!

I"ve just looked back at the sweepstakes.

Reverandy has suggested that if the SP is below 64p at announcement of FoiL, the winner should be the lowest guess. Which is NorthcBubble, who plumped for that price. I disagree with that a bit, and instead suggest that if the SP is below 64p, all monies should be sent to' Victims of Flood-Ravaged Atlantis'. It's a good cause, and a charity I'm going to have registered shortly after the start of the New Year.

I also couldn't help noticing that in the FoiL date sweepstake, the same NorthcBubble figures in the 'last five' with April 1st, the day after my own guess.

I wonder if he knows something the rest of us don't?

...maybe to help pay for the heating bill. Because if the SP has sunk that much, some of us might be looking there as a place to kip for the night...

Spruce,

"As an aside, it might be that none of us sweepstake enterers are low enough to 'win' for our charities, what does Father Everrandy do then?"

In such an event, I suggest we send Reverandy the money for the collection-box in his church.

During the summer I met up with our be-shelled correspondent 'escargot' at his house in the Dordogne. A well-spoken, comfortably affluent man-of-the-world. I still owe him lunch because he paid for mine in a nice restaurant near to the river.

Now he writes this:

" saw Zappa in 1988 NEC ...pretty sure it was his last major tour. Highlight was City of Tiny Lites. He was prolific with albums numbering in the 50's Sheik Yerbouti is a great album but my favourite is One Size Fits All......and of course Frank Zappa and the mother's of invention live at the Filmore East 1971."

That was a topic we didn't actually discuss. But somehow it doesn't surprise me. Birds of a feather,... etc.. Though personally I still prefer 'Just Another Band from LA' to Filmore '71, and reckon 'Apostrophe' to be the best-produced studio album.

I have dozens of Zappa's recordings. The Grateful Dead collection exceeds a hundred. Yet I spent most of my life pursuing a lucrative career in the oilfield, involving great responsibilities regarding both people and equipment, where (relatively) short haircuts were a requirement for safety reasons.

Funny old world...

johnpwh,

" My understanding is that the plate is more for streamlining during passage (fuel economy/speed), rather than for turret protection There is little danger of damage to the turret in the final leg. The plate has been dropped in Rotterdam as it is shallow water and so easily recoverable (which it has to be due to strict pollution/ salvage value considerations)"

I'm sorry to say it, but you are wrong. There was discussion here about the turret plate and its function even before the boat got to Rotterdam on the tow south. Then we saw the photos, and one or two people actually went to the trouble of contacting IR about it.

The thing was latched at the same deck-level and using the same 'dogs' as are used to latch the buoy. I other words, not flush with the bottom of the hull. Its purpose had nothing to do with streamlining or fuel efficiency.

The boat is now waiting on good weather for the transit to Shetland because they don't want seawater and all the detritus it contains these days splashing around the latching-deck.

Telephone IR in Lower Easham to confirm this if you don't believe me. Though after 1 pm you're probably better advised to phone The Stag on the River.

Wellwell,

"Who ‘buys’ music these days? On a CD."

I do. Also still have 300+ vinyls, and I don't know how many CD's. Which I like playing through my NAD 370 feeding a pair of BOSE 930's. But turned down really low these day as I now live in a town, and have neighbours.

Only get out the 802's when outdoors.

After a totally shite 36 hours involving driving 50 miles home this morning through a sort of ocean coming from the skies, on arriving chez moi I of course opened my letter-box. Wherein I found something frm American Express (instantly binned), and a letter with christmas card from my lovely neice. Enclosing a 'prezzie', which from size I knew must be a CD.

OK, it's not Christmas Day, but I opened it. And put it on the stereo immediately.

Eric Clapton has made a 'Christmas Album'.

Forget Brexit and POO, but buy this instead.