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Well, time will tell.

But Predator is run by a first-rate geologist who does everything ‘by the book’ including CPRs to provide an independent assessment to investors. I wish we’d had a CPR for Tendrara.

In a previous life, Predator was Fastnet, and before that Pathfinder. At the time the area was called Merada.

http://www.fastnetoilandgas.com/~/media/Files/F/Fastnet-Oil-and-Gas/financial-and-other-reports/cpr-report-pathfinder.pdf

Jones - this is what Shareprophets said

Anyone read Shareprophets today?

Once upon a time, with its shares at 82p, Sound Energy (SOU) was valued at c£500 million. But no institutions were backing it, this was just a ruthless private investor ramp. It worked but you cannot keep plates spinning forever and drill failures in Italy and Morocco brought the shares crashing down. Today there was a final kick in the gonads for the mug punters suckered in by CEO James Parsons and others.

The company – which has TWO retained brokers (RBS and Macquarie Capital (Europe) Limited) operating alongside Nomad Lagos Securities – has raised a paltry $3 million at 10p and while normal placings incur costs of c5% this one saw costs of $300,000. Hmmmmm coke and hookers all round in the City tonight.

You might have thought that with poor mug punters nursing losses of almost 90% there might have been an open offer. Oh no… private investors are the cannon fodder for ramping the shares now for them there are no shares offered at a discount just dilution. F-ing peasants they deserve it don’t they. It is not as if they are City insiders are they?

The company has also announced that it is slashing its pay by enough to reduce base salaries for executive directors by 29% going forward. Let’s put that in context. In 2018 Parsons earned £499,000 as a base salary. But he also picked up a bonus of £192,000 and an “additional award" of £300,000 and a pension contribution of £4,000. So not only can he live from the benefits of past plundering but even after this reduction he will not exactly be on the poverty line.

To be fair, in 2017 poor James struggled to get by on a package worth a mere £549,000. Austerity. Don’t you hate it. I blame the f-ing Tories.

We are told that the cash raised, net of City coke and hookers money, will be enough to last until the company can sell its Moroccan assets (2 of 2 non commercial wells to date). It expects to complete the disposal by the year end we are told. Really? Has it had firm offers? If so at what price? How can Nomad Cenkos justify that statement?

At just under 10p the company – which has debts of £20.5 million – is still valued at just over£100 million. There is no guarantee that the assets will be sold and even if they are that the receipts will be enough to clear the debts let alone leave anything at all for shareholders.

Abatt1

At the time of relinquishment of block 48/8 by Centrica in 2014 the Selene prospect didn’t meet the company’s commercial requirements and the relinquishment report was to justify giving up the licence. They believed they had better opportunities elsewhere. All relinquishment reports have ‘negative’ conclusions. After all, it would be very unlikely that an operator would issue a ‘positive’ report to justify relinquishment. As a rule, most relinquishment reports end with a ‘too risky’ or ‘too small’ justification - hence the conclusion.

But if you look at the immediate area you’ll see the Barque gas field in the block to the south, was discovered in 1966 when exploration drilling of the Sole Pit Basin was at its height. The first ‘natural gas’ started to arrive in UK that year and an army of ‘Gas Board’ technicians swarmed across the country converting burners in cookers, boilers and gas fires from ‘town gas’ The big fields nearby like West Sole, Leman and Indefatigable were developed and have now been decommissioned. Norwegian gas arrived from Frigg in the mid ‘70s. When oil was discovered at Montrose and Forties in 1968/9, it triggered a scramble to licence and drill elsewhere in the North Sea.

Attention returned to the southern North Sea in the 1990’s, pioneered by Shell bringing their experience from Netherlands and Germany. A selected initial area of the Barque field was developed for first gas in October 1990. Good reservoir performance from horizontal wells led to development of the whole field and the Clipper field at a cost of nearly $850 million. This was followed by hydraulic stimulation which transformed the economics. All this happened 30 years after the discovery well. So now Shell has nearly 30 years of reservoir performance data to use for exploration, and possible development of Selene.

Regarding Selene today, one must assume CNRL has applied some kind of ‘gizmo’ to reduce the uncertainty related to seismic depth conversion and convinced Shell to consider drilling a well. Quite an achievement, and a feather in the cap for CNRL’s team. A vertical well on Selene, in 22m of water, should cost in the region of $10 million. But the $25 million in the farm out agreement might suggest a horizontal side-track, perhaps with fracking, is part of the plan.

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