Member Info for Alfa

I imagine they may have had a barrage of irate shareholders after them, so they had a rethink and although it is good that they weren't afraid to change their plans, maybe they could/should have seen that one coming. I think as long as they didn't sell into the rise on any update, I think they'd be ok from an insider dealing point of view, especially as the shares were part of a placing, rather than being bought on the market – I hope so anyway, I don't think anyone wants to wait a month for an update. With the bid down to 18p now, at least that rules out any of the new shares being sold tomorrow, which is surely no coincidence.

The directors bonuses was probably a combination of two factors; paying themselves a bonus considering the state of the sp didn't look too good and by instead using their own money (rather than just bonus money) is a vote of confidence and suggests that they believe/know the sp will go up in the future (and not down on further placings or bad news). Looks like that 50k sell has hurt the sp today and we may see another large sell show up later, as the sp didn't drop straight away. The timing of the update is anyone's guess – but we are due updates on both Acacia and Arce – could be in 5 minutes or a week, I guess. Anytime soon would be good though; I'm going to need to start paying for some of my short terms punts soon and at the moment it looks like I'll be dusting off the sawn-off and heading down to the post office...

No, I expect only the ones at 20p are sells and anything higher, those ones in the 20.4s, will be buys. Debbie's description of the spread is how I understand it too – 20p will be the lowest bid and 21p the highest offer amongst the market makers. My last buy at 20.4p was when the offer was 22p and also showed up as a sell.

I recommended your post, but I'm not sure it does anything?! Jixon makes a valid point, but if we stuck to the facts, this board would be a scene from the Arizona desert, with just a few tumbleweeds rolling by!!

Looks like the directors have thought better of paying themselves bonuses, but are still buying as part of the placing, around 200,000 for both John Cubitt and Peter Kitson, or about £36k each – perhaps the bonuses weren't really appropriate and investing from their own salaries is much more a vote of confidence.

Black Rock was down after it placed 11 million shares at 18p in a bid to raise £2m. The move, to help fund the drilling of an appraisal well in Colombia, sent the shares down 12.5 per cent to 21p. One trader said: "It looks like there were good reasons for it. There probably will be some good news and I expect the shares to rally."

An interesting point I read elsewhere is that the recent sp fall could be explained by the mm's needing to walk the sp down to close to the placing level, to ensure the new shares are not sold en masse for a quick profit and only when they have the confidence that any selling would be matched by buying, that they would allow the sp to recover. I think that does make a lot of sense, as I have noticed that on many days of this slide, buys have often been ahead of sells, yet the sp has continued to fall, at an almost perfect rate to reach yesterday at just above the placing price. The new shares start trading from Friday, so maybe the recovery starts there. A positive from yesterday's RNS was also that an appraisal well for Acacia is going ahead, meaning test results since our last update must be looking good and surely when we finally get an update, we will get a much needed boost to the sp; here's hoping.

The placing announcement should at least put a floor beneath the sp. Institutional investors will not be buying these shares unless there is a high probability of a significant return and if they feel that is the case at 18p, then the shares are surely worth a lot more than that. I'm still hopeful of a bounce from here, prior to our next news instalment and it'll be interesting to see what press coverage we get, from Oilbarrel and the like. Amadan - good to see it isn't only me buying!

With the uncertainty out of the way – will the bounce start here? No more drilling news, other than the money will pay for an appraisal well for Acacia and an exploration well for Juanes.

Good to hear from you Jimarillo and interesting story on the fundraising. To raise £2m at 25p a share would mean 8m new shares, compared to the circa 21m in issue currently – a lot in absolute terms, but if the current sp has fallen by half recently, perhaps on fears of this placing, then it has been more than factored in (and that is assuming it will be all raised through a placing). The Acacia and Arce results will be crucial to the placing price and the decision of those taking part – therefore compiling the results and presenting and negotiating with them may well be a delaying factor, especially if BLR want to do a combined announcement of both good (results) and bad (placing) in one go, allowing them to have overall positive RNS. Personally, I don't see Kappa or Ecopetrol causing any problems, as long as BLR continue to provide the cash – and the placing will allow that. Traust and anyone else considering a sale – could you live with yourselves if you sell now at a (probably considerable) loss, only to see them soar within days! Judging by various posts I've read here and elsewhere, BLR shareholders already have a delicate mental state and I think this scenario would push many over the edge! I've just added some more at 20.4p (ok maybe I shouldn't comment on anyone's mental state!!).

Shares are always trouble, so don't worry and when you make a big profit it'll feel all the sweeter because of it!! The sp seems stubbornly unmoved by the buying today – we have lots of trades showing at 24.47 as sells, but I suspect these are buys as my buy is one of them. The sp is currently at historic lows – we had a couple of 24.5p closes on 20 June and 10 July – despite the early results of Acacia – so I can't see this falling further.

It was a partially involuntary action – but I've bought some more today, at 24.47p (the spread is much tighter than the advertised 23-26p and my buy was even a T20) – I just felt compelled and could not resist the sp. Unfortunately, that has been a recurring theme recently and on top of my core holding, I now have three additional "short term" punts – a sign of complete madness or a well-reasoned belief in this stock – time will tell, I guess! Good luck all :-)

The sp had actually fallen ahead of that sale, seemingly on a market-maker to market-maker trade of 25k at 31p. So it is possible it was a panic reaction thinking bad news had been announced and (s)he wanted to get out before further falls or possibly an automatic sale (although it isn't listed as such). Beatthespread; I hope the directors are too busy "increasing shareholder value" to browse the internet all day! – but I guess if I was a director I'd be interested in what was being said and I'd probably be tempted to post some unofficial non-specific comments to put investors minds at rest.

Yeah Traust, lets hope Acacia turns out to be a duster – with all the money we'll save not having to drill production wells and so forth, that's got to boost the sp!! Looks like we have the reason for the fall, a delayed trade of 100k at 2:48pm at a sp of 30.5p – lets hope the seller doesn't don't know something we don't...

There was just a sudden fall to 31p. I managed to buy at 32p as a reflex reaction on the bounce. Sp recovering to 34p offer now – looks like others took the opportunity too. Not sure what that was about, I can't see any news, but we are into the zone for another announcement soon, may well be this week, so rumours may be circulating, possibly some scare-mongering.

We should be getting an update on Acacia soon - excerpt from last RNS; "Currently the Acacia Well is being pumped at 3 or 4 spm and as long as the solids production remains stable, this may be increased to 5 spm until the end of this phase of the test, expected to occur on 31 August. Subsequently the well will be put onto a stabilized production rate for 5 days prior to a 5-10 day shut-in to allow a pressure build up test to be conducted by the operator." The 5-10 days should be the 10th-15th, so allowing for some time to compile and analyse the results, we should be moving into the timeframe for an announcement. Everything we have seen so far on Acacia has been positive and as long as there are no major setbacks there is no reason to believe that won't continue. BLR have been sensibly cautious so far with their announcements and the sp is currently weighed down by sentiment over their past record and the uncertainty of the placing to come – personally I believe there is little of Acacia's true significance in the sp and that there is plenty of upside from here. I've bought some more over the last few days as a short term trade, something that worked out nicely last time I did so back in July, ending up with a load of free shares to add to my long term holding. Good luck everyone.

Problem was people were looking for great news and we only got good. I think that is what we've seen, some people selling on that basis. Hang in there :)

Agreed womble, site much improved, but we need a list of recent posts - otherwise you can only guess at which stocks are being talked about!

Worth a read; http://www.oilbarrel.com/news/article.html?body=1&key=oilbarrel_en:1188525638&feed=oilbarrel_en

Perhaps not the glowing report we were hoping for, but good news none the less. A much better flow rate than Arce (which it needed to be) but maybe a bit heavier than we would have liked – although not as heavy as Arce – but as heavy oil is generally what is found in this region, that was always likely. They are continuing the programme apace however, so there is lots more newsflow to come yet. Neither the sp or volume have really been moved by this – I guess the RNS was kind of neutral so maybe this is to be expected, but I would still expect a rise back into the 50s on this, but we'll have to wait some more for our £1+ Another mention of the placing to come, but this isn't really news – but its spectre possibly a dampener on the sp. At the bottom though was an update on Monterey (at least I hadn't heard this before?), saying they had applied to "extend the license for another four years" and that there would be a "50% relinquishment...if the license extension is approved" – not great news, but the significance of Monterey is small compared to Acacia.