Continued:11 May 2016 08:30
ploration, rather than development or production. Over the past year it has rearranged its portfolio of prospects, exiting 5 of the 12 in last years portfolio, but adding 2 new ones.
Fortuna FLNG
The company has been in the news recently following the breakdown in negotiations with Schlumberger regarding the funding of the development of this project. The company remained confident in the economics of the project, and did not know why Schlumberger had walked away given that the economics had substantially improved during the course of their due diligence. The company is now searching for an alternative partner and claims to have “strong industry interest”. If it cannot find a partner the company has the resources to develop the field alone, and will make an FID (Final Investment Decision) in Q4 2016. It estimates that it may have to assign $100-$150m to the project.
Kerenden
First gas is expected in H2 2016. All the gas has been sold forward, and the company is currently attempting to renegotiate the gas prices upward. Thus far the proven resources are twice what has been contracted forward, and there is potential for the resource to be 2-5 times the initial contracts.
Myanmar
The company has very interesting potential prospects in offshore Myanmar, a region that has been relatively neglected due to the international sanctions imposed upon the country until relatively recently. There is an existing gas pipeline to China which any gas finds could be linked to, so the gas could be brought quickly to market. This is a potentially big prospect for an exploration outlay of around $20m.
Company prospects
Even without any more exploration success the successful development of the company’s existing finds should raise daily production from the current 11,000 boepd to 30,000 by 2019/20. Over the same period 2P reserves are forecast to rise from 54mmBO to 250mm, and free cashflow from $70m to $200m.
Executive Remuneration
I tackled the head of the remuneration committee, Vivien Gibney, over the fact that in 2015, while shareholders were suffering substantial losses, the CEO Nick Cooper received a salary increase of 14.1%, benefits of +11.1%, and a bonus of 43%. She made a lame excuse about him having met targets. I made the point that shareholders were happy to see executives rewarded when the company does well, but do not want them to also do well when it does badly. Shareholders are always sold executive pay packages as an incentive scheme, but find that during the good times executives are rewarded for performance and during the bad times they are rewarded for “effort”. The net effect is that executives are rewarded throughout the cycle. If only shareholders were likewise rewarded. In a meeting with director Alan Booth after the AGM, I was assured that the question of executive pay was being addressed, and that the Chairman Bill Shrader has a track record of forcing down pay. Let’s hope so