The Trojan Horse29 Nov 2024 20:46
This looks like a Trojan Horse strategy to me. Ian Ramsay, a former Vice President of Murphy Oil and several of his team of managers and engineers relocate from Murphy in Houston and set up shop in London for Navitas to run a project team.
As Borgo (like him or not) has suggested, Murphy might be the long trailed third partner in Sea Lion, and what better way to get inside information than offer to Navitas a good and experienced project team to get it going. Once the EIS was complete and the Field Development Plan agreed by a trusted team, economics revised and FPSO identified, the farm in opportunity for Murphy will be seen with 20/20 vision. Murphy knows what’s occurring IMO.
Murphy was one of the interested parties back in the days of RKH looking for partners, that’s public information. The other interested parties, Anadarko, Dana, Premier, Noble and Cairn have all gone to the wall, one way or another.
This possible outcome is something that might easily leak in a large team of engineers, at the Shakespeare, not Sharkie's, which is where Borgo’s story comes from. Navitas have lit the fire with the public announcement of reserves and a programme to develop them, and the Murphy possibility has thrown petrol on it.
You wouldn’t want to be out over the weekend, would you?