Member Info for adoubleuk

IJWT, "Be facetious all you like with reductive ebay comments but frankly if the BoD are not planning for an IFD given how the FO expectations turned out then I would be most perturbed." That brought a happy grin to my face, for which I sincerely thank you! :-)) In fact, I believe that despite all the debate, we're actually singing off the same hymn-sheet, but simply not in the same key. Not dischordantly neither, though. Your phrase "presuming a bid will come in post EPS is an error I hope the board are not making after it seems presuming the FO/FI was coming and then becoming over extended" is very pertinent. But here's where our views seem to differ. It's not that I 'hope' the board aren't making such an error, instead I have complete trust that they aren't! And so, seemingly, do the people who stumped up the cash a year ago to achieve the biggest AIM junior O&G fundraise ever! Go to the company website and check out the BoD's CV's. Those boys haven't just fallen off the pumpkin truck. They're KNOWN, for goodness' sake. Crikey, I first met the CFO in my office of the Congolese national oil company in Pointe Noire. They're International Oilmen of international renown. They call Bob Dudley by his first name, not 'Mr Dudley'. Now look at page 7 of the latest corporate presentation, righthand column, bottom bulletpoint. With the 'handshake' symbol. "Now able to negotiate from a position of strength..." Is it 'facetious' to follow the smart money?

Soapbar, More. (Because although I'm English, I'm not a mad dog, and nothing's going to tempt me outside in today's sunshine. And anyway, it's fun watching the SP heading for another blue day again.) "In the absence of a JV/FI an IFDP could benefit from a larger FPSO at Lancaster and that would allow AM to go elsewhere." But the 'in the absence of' bit is a huge assumption! In fact, a completely unrealistic one. (Sorry, no, not a fact, simply a personal opinion.) The thinking seems utterly wrong to me. The EPS is just what it is: a quick an' dirty solution to prove up something which by rights will end up being far bigger. So one should be imagining that bigger picture, not just 'upgrades'. Check back on some CEO inteviews just a couple of years ago. Remember the idea of the 'Hurricane Hub'? ...... Forget bigger FPSO's. Instead think of a stonking great platform which will make the old Ninian Central look small. By which time the AM will have been recycled into being part of someone's refrigerator or washing-machine. .... GLA is not deepwater. "

JoeSoap, "Did IJWT not suggest a cheaper FPSO could be found?" Did he? I dunno. Maybe I'll look on ebay just to see if he's correct. But somehow I don't get the impression that any of Hurricane's BoD do 'cheap'.

IJWT, "The IFD suggestion is a simplistic conclusion of what the business could achieve through organic cashflow in event of successful EPS." OK, yeah, I can see that. But as we've now gone off into fantasy land (maybe it's due to the heat), here's an attempt at a serious question. Who'll bell the cat? Why imagine it'll be Hurricane? As the saying goes, why have a dog and do the barking yourself? Assuming EPS kicks in OK, the next step envisioned by the company, and as set out in the latest presentations, is to 'monetise', thereby achieving fullest-possible shareholder value. And Dr T has a lot of shares, remember! The good Doctor might have an infectiously lopsided grin, and I'll bet he's one heck of a party animal at times, but he's not crazy. Not a dull boy who's all work and no play. Sure, one of these days there'll be FFD of the GLA. Maybe due to the immensity of the field there'll be an 'IFD' as well. But my money says it won't have the Hurricane logo stamped on the side. Just ask the barmaid at The Stag.

Got to admit I find this thread rather amusing. Already we've got a sweepstake running for the date of FoiL, with a 'spread' of about six months. So nobody knows exactly when we'll 'start pumping oil' yet. However, this uncertainty notwithstanding, someone else wants to know what the SP will be! When nobody can say with any certainty what the SP will be tomorrow, let alone next week. Furthermore, someone else is referring the questioner to a different BB for some reason. For advice from a person who calls himself 'dspp'. I'd like to quote a line from one of 'spp's lengthy posts: "As I have pointed out before HUR can continue to self-fund into an Intermediate Field Development (IFD) at a further $1bn or so by putting a larger FPSO (100,000 bbl/d) at about the EPS location, and moving the AM EPS up towards the Halifax area." I don't know where this information comes from, but I sure haven't read anything about it in any of the literature available on the Hurricane website. Maybe Dspp on Lemonfool is Ricfle in disguise...

pijoe, "my wall of cash" Cor, you sound like the Phil Spector of PI investing! Do you like the Ronettes, by any chance? "Da doo ron , da doo ron ron"... etc.... Happy trails this sunny weekend. 'Wall of cash' indeed. I should be so lucky.

IJWT, The BB's understandably quiet this weekend, but glancing through yesterday's posts while enjoying a beer on a sunny cafe terrace, I saw this: "I dare say bigger players than us may have redress written into contracts but we are perhaps a market taker not a market maker as regards terms of contracts for now." Don't you believe it! Just for starters, rig contracts are highly 'generic' when it comes to units like those Hurricane uses and which people like Transocean can provide. It doesn't matter how big or small the dlient company is, the only significant differences may be in dayrate. Depending on duration of the contract, of course. This isn't small land-based mom an' pop West Texas stuff. Think back a couple of years, and the 'Spitsbergen'. TO were delighted to charter that top-of-the line thing to Hurricane at a really cheap rate. The alternative would have been 'warm-stacking' it, at a five-figure daily cost. And now with the PBLJ, the rig's got a relatively longterm contract jointly with Hurricane and Zennor, if I've read things right. It's the 'small' people like Hurricane who are 'making the market' for the rig contractors at the moment. Giving them work. The big boys have retrenched so much from exploration over the last three years that the rigs would otherwise be 'stacked', which costs money and is a drain on the contractors' own resources. I very much doubt that Neil Platt has to pay for his own lunch whenever he visits Transocean Towers.

IJWT, " as they (TO) would have detailed knowledge of what the **** up at Shaw entailed. Just to give TO the benefit of the doubt, I'm not sure this is true. Whatever happened at Shaw, Repsol/Sinopec obviously had an urgent and serious situation on their hands. The rig was only a day's sailing out of Invergordon when she was diverted, and only a day's sailing from Shaw, so not much time for the management to get up to speed. I've never encountered such an occasion, but I rather suspect it's similar to ships diverting to the scene of an emergency when a mayday call is broadcast. Sssv has posted that the rig's currently getting to the end of a second 'relief well', so whatever went on out there must have been serious. The logical assumption is that Repsol took what's known as an 'underground blowout': this is a very serious well-control situation, where despite the dramatic-sounding name, the well doesn't actually breach surface, causing a major oil spill, the rig burning down, etcetera. If the latter had been the case, it would have been frontpage on all the media news, of course. As it happens, the whole thing's been clamped-down tighter than a duck's fundament. Nothing in the media, nothing in the trade journals, nothing on Repsol's website, and nobody in ABZ seems to be talking. So now, we might not find out what the situation was for a couple of years. It's a bloomin' nuisence for 'us', though, even if the resultant delay isn't a show-stopper.

.....However, I think you'll find that the Island Constructor is charered to Britoil for work at Foinaven. Maybe she's finished that, don't know. But that's the only DECC permit currently in place for her.

Wellwell, "I noted she entered Aberdeen today. " Interesting. Not impossible...

It's the PSV contracted to Zennor and Hurricane. Keep up.

Wellwell, " It's not going to be able to run any trees." And who has said anything about using a boat to run the trees? Other than yourself, here, and Nigwit over on Lemonfool?

Slugworth, The Skandi Feistein is on her way to Aberdeen.

Can't you read? Even when I write in uppercase? I like salmon, too.

Ricfle, Despite everything I must yet again reply. "I was just trying to understand the start up flow rates" OK. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE EFFIN STARTUP FLOWRATES WILL BE. Does that satisfy you? The thing is, probably nor do Hurricane! They'll know what they're aiming for, but to achieve that, they'll have to tweak and adjust all sorts of things: choke sizes, ESP settings, etc.. They don't have some magic control lever graduated in bbl/day, in just the same way as the volume control knob on your stereo amplifier isn't graduated in the number of dB's generated in the room. It depends on your speaker impedence, input signal amplitude, etc. And other stuff. As mentione befored, the chart on page 22 of the presentation illustrates average daily production anticipated. You can't work backwards from it to find out flowrate at wellhead. And anyway, why do you want to? The company's giving us lots of really good information in a way they didn't before. But you seem to want to know how many sugars the Production Superintendant takes in his coffee, as well. I'm sure that after a few weeks of EPS flow, we'll maybe get an RNS telling us some more tech detail such as how startup was done, and so on. But 'til then, we'll just have to wait. Both of us. And while I'm wasting my time writing this ('cos I've got more interesting and important stuff on my plate right now), I'd like to reply to Wellwell's comment. "Might I suggest (once again) that you use phrases like �in my opinion� and �I do/don�t believe� in future" You don't need to suggest that, because I already do so, very frequently. But I you probably just don't notice. In my opinion, that is.

Ricfle, "I think you need to try again!" I don't and I'm not going to bother. Nearly all your arguments over the last couple of years appear tinged with a somewhat paranoid supposition that Hurricane don't know what they're doing, that they ought to have bought half a dozen FPSO's instead of one (which is too small anyway), that the wells have been designed wrongly and the company should have drilled big-bore things that can produce faster, etc., etc. Maybe you should email Dr Trice with your suggestions as you seem to know so much more about oilwell technology than he does. I'm giving up banging my head against your brick wall, 'cos it gets painful after a while...

Sprucegoose2, Well spotted! Yes. (Oh and I made a mistake in my post. The relevent charts are pp22 & 24, not page 23.)

Ricfle, Firstly, I do not consider myself an 'expert on EPS flow rates' nor have I ever claimed to be one. However, here is my interpretation of those charts (pp 22-23 of the presentation). The first graph shows 'Average daily production rates', not instantaneous flowrates for each individual well. This will include flowline pigging runs (no production) possible changeovers between wells, and also built-in downtime contingency. Plus the figures are a forecast, not a production parameters plan. In other words, over the three-month ramp-up 'steps', the grey shaded area show how much oil is anticipated to be collected in the FPSO's storage tanks, not individual well flowrates on any particular day during those periods. Wrt the second graph, yes you seem to have read it correctly, showing drawdown pressure at 20k bpd. The 43k bpd part is for information, illustrating the theoretical absolute maximum rate a well could be flowed at, beyond which the drawdown pressure would exceed that of bubble point.. The key word here is 'theoretical': it does not mean the wells, flowlines etc. would be able to sustain such a flow. Instead it is just showing that a rate of 20k is comfortably within the theoretical 'speed limit'. This is useful information, because it shows us that even at 20k bpd a well would not be running 'flat out' in terms of what the reservoir can provide. That having been said, and the fact that 20k bpd is always mentioned as achievable 'top-end' (as distinct from 25k, for instance), indicates to me that 20k per well is the maximum designed-in limit of the flowlines, manifold, downhole equipment, and so on.

Something for Boyzee, Casapinos, or the other financial wizards here. I'm just about to turn in for the night, but have idly turned to the SP chart for the first time in a while. And noticed something which seems a bit strange to me. Though the devious workings of 'the market' very often seem strange to me. Our recent 'high point' was 43.3p. (OK, we're slightly 'red' compared to that, but what's 0.3p between friends?) That was on Thursday 26th, the day CA put their not-inconsiderable tranche of shares up for sale. And (maybe more understandably) that was also the biggest day for trade volume there's been for a long time. I've got my own thoughts about this, but don't really want to air them here, because they may well be wrong. But do any of you have an analysis of this which can be explained in layman's terms, even if it's pure theorising?

Joe, "Therefore to arrive on site by the end of September it would have to leave before the mid-point of Q3, and that does not allow for work in Rotterdam or transit to the field, but jimo." Yep, we're really getting down to fine toothcomb stuff here, none of which really makes a difference in regard to the bigger picture! But nevertheless I suspect both the transit time and the stopover may be 'conservative' estimates based on worst-case asessments, with quite a lot of margin involved. But so far it's anyone's guess. Only one thing I'm certain of. When we get word that the boat has left port, the number of 'shipwatchers' will increase dramatically! :-))