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I don’t have time for a lengthy reply this morning but do take a look at Columbus’ 2019 results. https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/document-api-images-live.ch.gov.uk/docs/gccGd262m8_jbqaUbay_bgqR73qRqORhzEceo3RVixQ/application-pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAWRGBDBV3IEFIB6UV%2F20210516%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20210516T081131Z&X-Amz-Expires=60&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEJD%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCWV1LXdlc3QtMiJGMEQCIBvm6Mv5FdRdbAnfg4W15oqp7qa7GYa7gDHVA3ZXpcKbAiBUZLA62XqRe8SqpVFPQBMihyHtbty3eZOcqZdUqJNYeiq0AwgoEAMaDDQ0OTIyOTAzMjgyMiIMNCOEb6UCUcilKye8KpEDeHFhBuw5uwiNoRM9LupDIRk1Or8TT%2Fah8DAd8YsvaNP%2BLFqPfTUjPXzuX1QVf7UPb9zcma%2F552jLSZ6NhcjUCfCNbIpGQjBJ69PSA3N00vyldzMvD915trxEVZpfromKFLiri%2B67BlhnJhHCNeWUaJPAfzWgP5snIZrA7c6y%2FlNiduD%2F%2F5hVTAwQtZlMVMTyo9PAbho9CW2DDpF7ochWdjo0rIGbuMvMt8div2wmYdrlRu08SOo19%2FuzU1Rk%2BUYih0je9och8J9hrHhIJbUJNfbex0Zziqhd9aC3wbH0xnYI4Ry0hsSGVS3dlCgxqjtwHFhNbYuRsMT3sc6G0PGqpdR82XRB0i8jNv%2B6REyU%2BZCNXrIiP3wwr%2FykomOesyhQr1wOR8MYNLazxea09l8t0cSp4lX3eIPSBF8i4Uxejj5KKfX1nPRs7cCoLGdvYSYtW7DDa%2BmRrWxfetABs5sEI%2Fky%2BhcwnB9eNv%2FJcSyBBrzHdttboeOSWpcx35%2FDTHGKuYReI%2Fzz1rziqwCkG4vHGrkw5Y6DhQY67AGFTj9z%2FTxz7ManxInC5qIbyE1HkXGv5jZCEhuYNNLRm0vHeVehz4ClTZo7G5WN%2BluBwDWf8PvZhL4k5e6ziF%2Fxu8cev%2BMvAsWZG9inJhc7gjNfyb%2FuX4%2FOp2hwKJAqHru3G3ltbByqSopLPy55eD9qM3Lk2Df8pt%2BzyCTSRR%2FfwpHP6GkR3KH7h2FJnjQrRwzzmg9xiryDvWnRNGfRRgJJ745N3QzO5uj16r0yS%2FtpmQsS02GEO4PDAKh0xzVbw77O%2FjjZliZobxk0JrP5jh%2FIJcJHYkMFbH4BMRr5b5Yka7UcZZjzHYrr0k1nwQ%3D%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22companies_house_document.pdf%22&X-Amz-Signature=41b38006899cab85359771c02243e565bdfe95eb52c63846c96722dbe3cd2897

From the table on p17, you can quickly work out that royalties were 28% and extraction costs were $27 per barrel (when the wells were yielding more oil).

The $20 you sourced is a 2021 aspiration once 80% of the oil is coming from 10 brand new, very production new Saffron wells. It is not the current figure for running over 100 old wells.

Royalties are not zero, opex is not (and never has been) $20/b so your interpretation cannot be correct.

SC, you have not PROVED the BPC is generating $3m after G&A pre capex. You have merely stated without evidence that they earn $40/barrel proof at $60 Brent and then work that through to the bottom line. That is known as garbage in, garbage out.

Not only is it unproven, it is nonsensical. Here are TXP’s results from this week. $21 netback per barrel. Are you telling me BPC’s barrels are nearly twice as profitable? https://www.investegate.co.uk/touchstone-explrtn.--txp-/rns/first-quarter-2021-results/202105130703545139Y/

And here are Columbus’ own results in the past. H1 2019: 561b/d at $57 Brent ... loss-making. H2 2018: 485b/d at $61 Brent ... loss-making. What can have changed since then to make BPC highly profitable in the same production/price circumstances? https://www.investegate.co.uk/columbus-energy-res--cerp-/rns/half-year-report/201909040700081141L/

“Looking at this another way, had the Put not been exercised, and $1.7m/£1.2m added to the Open Offer or Placing NOW at 0.35p, it would have cost 343m shares @0.35p. “

I’m a bit late to the party on this one but...

I don’t agree your calculation of the $1.7m because there’s no indication the fundraising fees at being rebated by LO as opposed to by a third party (Gneiss?).

Regardless of that, what if we use your $1.7m and “it would have cost 343m shares”.
Unfortunately the out option cost 187.5m shares at exercise and now - but your numbers - $3.3m today which means 673m @ 0.35p: therefore 861m in total. $1.7m for 861m makes it an average funding price of 0.14p per share.

Worse funding deal in the history of AIM? Yes they were desperate but even a 1p placing would have been far better. They just seem desperate to avoid admitting the mess they were in, and that included insisting the other findings lines were still available when now they admit they’d gone cold.

And again, this is relevant today because we are given the same promise S2 will be fully funded because the CCNs are going to come to the rescue.

SC, I'm not claiming the $17m is sourced or entirely accurately. It would have been great if the company had told us on 24/3 what their debts were but apparently the Bahamas farm-in plan and the current cash in the bank were the only information they thought would help the share price.

I'm merely illustrating that it doesn't follow that, if they've paid out $3m on P1 since March, their debts are now lower than $14m. Their debts are now $14m because that's what they've explicit stated, not somehow less than $14m because of previous month's outflows, as you implied.

The $3m spent can’t have been used to reduce the $14m debt because, if it had, the debt would have been quoted at $11m not $14m. We also know BPC have only paid the rig mobilisation fee for S2.

The simpler explanation is that as at 1/3 the outstanding P1 costs were $17m and now they are $14m.

SvS, they have now been adequately transparent about the funding picture, or so I thought.

They had $7m in the bank. If the OO/Placing delivers $9.6m and if Bizzell provide $2.6m, then they will have $19m.

They owe LO $4m and the drillers $14m, hoping to get the latter down to $10m in which case they would $5m of the $19m left for S2 and Suriname.

But if the OO does not reach £5m (and then Bizzell’s £2m drops away too) they have less than $14m. How then could they go ahead with S2? Going ahead regardless - spending LO/Stena’s money on S2 - would I think be trading while insolvent, a criminal offence for directors.

It’s also a rubbish excuse to blame the whole LO deal on the circumstances. Yes the deal was written in December and they can blame Christmas and the court case. But the first $15m wasn’t really the problem. That problem was the second $5m option taken. They elected to take that in mid January after the injunction was thrown out, and they had a whole extra month to find better funding or reestablish the
original funding.

Why didn’t the Bizzell money come good in January once the legal threat that might have stopped the drilling was gone?

Unfortunately Auctus don’t agree with you there. Have a look at their financial modelling.: c$20 profit per barrel not $40. What’s the source for $20 costs because for lifting costs that reasonable, but BPC also sell their oil to Heritage at a discount for marketing/quality (c$9 according Auctus) and have to pay further royalties of c$11 per barrel. 60-9-11-20=20.

As long as I’m not at risk of repeating myself more than you do SC, BPC are not generating cashflow after open and G&A. The $3m from production does not cover the $4m central costs.

Here’s how they put it in the OO RNS:

“at a US$60/bbl oil price, 500 bopd of stable production from these fields results in annual cashflows to BPC of approximately US$3 million per annum, which approximately equates to the Company's operating costs and overhead in Trinidad.”

In other words the $3m covers approximately $3m of G&A in Trinidad. The Trinidad business breaks even. It does not cover their G&A outside Trinidad: executive costs, PLC costs, Bahamas licence costs.

So BPC overall continues to burn cash even before S2 capex. And I contest that a breakeven production business in Trinidad is worth £27m to cover the market cap, as does the Auctus valuation if you are willing to test Eytan’s fuzzy bar chart.

You might not care, that’s up to you, but others have taken heart from him taking up his rights. Especially when others, whose holdings we do know, are not fully subscribing.

If Eytan has lost millions, now holds say £500k and is putting in £200k then that’s an impressive commitment. If he’s putting in £30k to entice shareholders to get the OO over the line and sustain his £200k salary, that’s not aligning himself with you.

And surely you need to be able to trust management. What if S2 is more likely to flow 100b/d and all the fundraise is really doing is letting them drill a well that keeps the lights on?

The annual results might be published next month but they’ll be for 31/12/2020 at which point he wasn’t a director.

Maybe we’ll be an initial disclose when he does join the board, or just get his OO purchase - I’m not sure. I’ll wager he puts in less than 20% of his new salary.

SvS, EU is not a director on the board so his holdings are not given in the accounts. But I think he is a person discharging managerial responsibility so I believe any purchases he’s made should have been reported at the time.

Another thing that bothers me. Eytan says he has been writing out cheques to buy millions of shares. Since he clearly fits the definition of a PDMR any such urchases should have been notified to the market. The silence is deafening.

I certainly look forward to learning how many shares he holds and his subscription to the OO, but I have a suspicion we may never find out.

We (I) don't. Feel free to make your own conclusions as to whether the 14/12 RNS was reasonable if the motiavation for the LO funding line was that other lines were no longer available.

In fact I would say Bizzell are the only secured creditors. In a wind up they would get first cut of the liquidation and the other unsecured creditors (LO, Stena) come behind them.

If the plan was to give Bizzell (and who knows else behind Bizzell) a high-return pay off on P1 with virtually no downside risk (i.e. asset backing), it couldn’t have been done any better. The last piece was acquiring some assets without spending any cash: the Columbus merger.

You forgot the best part: for more than a year having their Aussie mates signal they were going to put in £20m, so the well was nearly funded, when in fact there was never any commitment that the money was coming.

In the end the convertible raised a paltry £3m. But that came with granting to their mates an OUTRAGEOUS option to put in £3.5-7m at 2.5p AFTER the P1 well result for an immediate £10-30m gain if it came good. What a coincidence that the well apparently went $10m over budget, despite not running over time - an amount that would have cleanly covered them needing that last minute £7m from Bizzell.

And what else worked in Bizzell’s favour: CERP. Dragging all those extra shareholders into P1 had one very silver lining - Bizzell’s £3m now has first security on all the T&T assets whereas without CERP they’d have probably been wiped out with shareholders.

NellyB, yes and then convert the £2.5m convertible to 74m shares and issue a further 34m "Fee shares" and you have 789m consolidated shares. Which at 3.5p would be £27.6m market cap. All on page 8 of the Circular.

I didn’t object to the tone of the presentation overall but the part about the market cap being covered by the producing assets, with everything else free upside, is disingenuous to say the least. They’ve even taken the scale off the chart on the website presentation and have not updated it for Auctus’ latest note which reflects their admission of the true financial position.

The valuing of the existing business in Auctus’ note is: Net cash -4m, G&A -27m Goudron 12m; Inniss Trinity 30m; South Erin 7m; Icacos, Cedros, Bonasse 4m. That adds up to $22m and certainly doesn’t cover the £27m market cap.

Put it another way. If the upside doesn’t come good, there is no way BPC could sell its producing assets ($3m cf/yr) which require a large team to sustain
for enough to pay off its debts and have $40m left over for shareholders.

So there is a substantial amount in the share price for S2 and Suriname already.

If you hold the shares electronically, your entitlements to take shares in the open offer are also delivered to you electronically. The entitlements are themselves a financial intrument with their own ISIN code and they now sit in your ISA, in conflict to the fact that you ISA can only hold listed shares. So the basic entitlements in your ISA are indeed not ISE eligible, but I wouldn't worry - this situation is temporary and not unique. Your exiting share and any you take in the open offer are ISA eligible.

No the close out costs are $14m as described in 4.1. The co are telling you they think they can reduce the cash cost (negotiations and pay-with-shares) by 20-30% and if they do the cash saving is c$4.5m, I.e. the cash cost is $9.5m.