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Hi MM, Article dated 13 April, refers to situation up to then : ..."Pr�sent � Brazzaville, Bruno Le Maire s'est entretenu avec le Premier ministre Cl�ment Mouamba et son homologue Calixte Nganongo. Il n'a pas �t� re�u par Denis Sassou Nguesso. Dans l'entourage de Bruno Le Maire, on pensait pourtant ce t�te-�-t�te possible dans l'apr�s-midi. Mais contrairement au 13 d�cembre 2017, le Congolais n'a pas souhait� voir Bruno Le Maire...." Salut

Hi all, Over on LemonFool, dspp reckons that the FPSO can handle production from appraisal wells on Lincoln (8Km step out) AND Warwick (10 Km stepout) , and that these (plus a Halifax re-entry) are the next drill targets. He concludes : ..."By clever phasing of the shut-in periods they could then produce all three reservoirs sufficient to appraise them over the next couple of years, e.g. flow Warwick when Lancaster shut in (for pressure response analysis) etc; and still stay beneath the overall flare consent limit. Looking good :)..." ATB, DYOR etc etc

Hi MM, Good find ! As ever, the devil is in the detail... Your article also reports that the IMF is in C-B to test the President's willingness to undertake necessary political reforms re governance and corruption; to clarify the Chinese contribution to a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio; and to 'encourage' the President to demand some debt relief from the Chinese, since Paris (CFA sponsor) and Washington (US ? or IMF?) are no longer willing/able to firefight in face of C-B intransigence . The Euro (not �) 135 M 'sweetener' is , as you say, conditional on tangible progress in these areas. The President has so far declined to meet the French Minister. Maybe there'll be a breakthrough in the next few days ? Back in the day, of course, the excolonial power would just have arranged a palace coup and installed someone more malleable... ATB

Hi tomshare, I stand corrected ! For some reason the renewed contract hasn't made it to English language google, which only shows the 2013 contract.... Maybe the constellations just (for me) got a little more aligned. Thank you. ATB

Hi all, Well, someone appears to think this has legs : 200,000 just bought at full ask 27.50 p. I wonder if it's another top-up by the Laings ? ATB

Hi tomshare, No-one, I hope, is arguing that the constaellations are aligning more favourably for ZIOP than they have in the last few years. Howver, it's a bit misleading to report as part of the alignment... ...""Other projects under discussion related the exploitation of the Mengo mine at Pointe-Noire" MENGO MINE (Magindustries : Corp) 26th of Feb 2018 "East China Engineering Science & Technology Co., Ltd signed a construction contract with MagIndustries Corp and MagMinderals Potasses Congo S.A." So the Mengo Mine (Potash) has signed a construction contract with a Chinese company. ...." when this is taken verbatim from http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/magindustries-east-china-engineering-sign-497m-development-deal-2013-07-11, which references a contract signed in mid 2013, ie 5 years ago and includes the following : ..." MagIndustries pointed out that preconstruction started in March. The completion and handover of the project was scheduled for March 31, 2016, subject to the conclusion of a project finance package."... The ZIOP / ZIOC story is good enough, it doesn't need embellishment, particularly of the inaccurate kind. ATB

Hi all, Here's an extract from dspp's analysis over on LemonFool, which I commend to the House : ..."Regarding four majors, as I have said before there are many games to be played in FO/FI discussions and negotiations. But my observation is that they like company so as to share the risks. Historically in the UKCS they tend to be in pairs, or threes. So either one pair takes GWA and another takes GLA, or perhaps a trio takes both GWA+GLA. So roughly 3-4 majors. Now odd things do happen and maybe something different will come to pass (and I have sketched one way something very different could come to pass) but absent something odd there will likely be multiple majors all playing footsie with each other and that will have been going on for years, and will continue until someone(s) make a sufficient offer. There is a real risk that four majors (of the say six-eight who might be interested) all go on a buyers strike for an extended period (as now, but they have an excuse right now) to try and starve HUR out. I have pointed out this risk before, and solutions, and implications. And I did that before making the decision to buy in to HUR as it is one of the biggest risks. These sort of things should not be coming as a surprise to anyone who is a longer term investor in shares such as HUR and one needs to think through the dynamics and timescales carefully. The worst thing for realising full shareholder value is for some useful fool who is scared of losing his own job as a fund manager to try to take over on the cheap, then sell out on the cheap. Fortunately there are defences against this, we will see if they are sufficient...." The problem we are seeing with CA is that RB is constrained by prudential and internal regulation to sell down his HUR exposure every time the s/p rises a bit. It's not good for PI's, because this acts as a temporary depressant on the share price....and it's not good for CA, because they won't be optimising their returns. I can't help thinking that there must be some clever derivative structure that might get around this. ATB

Hi haggis_trap, The best description of how things "might" play out that I've seen is by dspp over on lemonfool. Well worth a few minutes of your search time, esp around Sept 2017 (p 16 on the HUR thread). ATB

Hi wellwell, Aah ! Now I am understanding..... I hope you're not putting Dr T and co on a par with those 'cowboys' who go around 'seeding' mines with gold pellets from a shotgun....cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X. If I may say, I think you're treading on dangerous ground ...... ATB

Hi again, wellwell, ..." Anyone heard of a 'bankers burn' out of interest?".... No, and as a former banker, always happy to learn something new ! I've heard of banker bake-off a.k.a. beauty contest, when pitching for a mandate, but not a 'burn'. Please enlighten me ! ATB

Hi wellwell, You asked about the calibre of HUR's investor base. Here's what 10 minutes googletime throws up : Leaving aside Kerogen (429m / 21.9%) and Crystal Amber (150m/12.2%), the next largest appears to be Pelham (122m/6.22% - a hedge fund that made �42m last year and �90m the year before. I use profitability as a proxy for 'success'). Then comes College America (69m/3.5% - this is part of the Capital Group, 3rd largest II in the world, with US$ 1. 3 trillion under management). Then comes BostonPartners (43.5m / 2.2% - with a mere US$ 100 billion under management). There are also likely to be material holdings by II's/ family offices etc in the CV's, that I don't have access to. I take the cautionary point re 'blind faith'. However, there's a Spanish proverb ' Dime con quien andas y te dire quien eres' : Tell me who you're walking with and I'll tell you who you are. I think I'm walking in pretty good company. NAI, DYOR etc etc. ATB

Hi Ricfle, ..."What is the point of a programme and reporting progress on it?"... HUR management have produced a 'broad brush' timeline , for an investor presentation. Most investors will be generalists, not specialists, so there's little to be gained from providing granular detail. I'm prepared to wager - based on stuff I've seen on other, admittedly non-oil projects - that HUR and its (incentivised) project management partners will be tracking each critical path line item on a daily basis, if not more frequently. Your flagging up to fellow PI's possible timeline concerns is all well and good, but there's not a lot - realistically - that we can do about it, especially as we don't have the detail. Unless you're suggesting that PI's derisk by selling up, which seems an over-reaction, based on the limited info we have. " Don't keep a dog and bark yourself". ATB

Hi wellwell, ..." what else would you expect him to be after succesfully convincing the smaller II's to commit over $500m to the concept?..." We don't know many of the identities of the II's, but IIRC the few we do know about are actually pretty big, no ? ATB

Hi Ricfle, I take on board your points re some slight 'tightening' of the schedule, but wonder whether this shouldn't be revisited in a few weeks' time...or at the AGM ? You write ..."From the original programme, 6 operations were due to start in a window beginning Q2 2018. 1 operation "Boulder Clerance" was completed in 2017, 1 operation FPSO sail away has been delayed until end Q3 and the other 4 operations are yet to start...." But we're only 10 days into Q2, man , and the presentation was probably pulled together a couple of days ago ie 8 or 9 days into a 91-day quarter...... Jes' sayin' , like... ATB

Hi wdelboy2, ..."couldnt the Chinese act as a guarantor for the bank to fund larger amounts for their own projects ...?" Good point ! But .....I wouldn't act as personal guarantor for my feckless cousin, would you ;-> ? There's also the issue of currency convertibility : getting a loan in CFA is really only worthwhile to cover local currency costs, which are likely only a small %age of overall project spend. Because there's the added complication that - as part of the CFA arrangements, which are a French colonial legacy - the fixed rate convertibility of CFA to Euro comes at a price : half of all the CFA zone hard currency reserves are held in France, which then has defacto a big say in monetary policy. Imagine the complications if � were exchangeable to Euro at a fixed rate , but our FX and gold reserves were held at the Bundesbank.... ATB

Hi tomshare, ..."Maybe you could look at things a bit more deeply? Try looking at what Xi Jinping said about this BSCA bank earlier in the year and its role in the RoC." Perhaps, tom, you'd care to share ? ATB

Hi wdelboy2 et al, The capital of BSCA-Bank is 50,000 million CFA, which sounds like a lot but @ 530 +/- to the US$ is about USD 100 million. Knock off whatever they've paid for the building + any other fixed assets (ATM's , computers, cash-in-transit etc) and they've probably got about USD 80 million in liquid capital, some of which they'll have to leave with the Central Bank as liquidity reserve and with their correspondent banks overseas to support trade finance etc. Say that leaves them with unencumbered USD 60 million, and they leverage 10 x , to get customer deposits (probably short term) of about USD 600 million. They can't put too many eggs in one basket ...and they can't lend too much long-term, overall, in case some / any of their depositors want their money back. Back of an envelope, from a conventional, prudential perspective, the new bank is unlikely to be able to provide more than about USD 50 million in term finance, at a guess. Not shabby, but not meaningful in the context of the various funding needs of ZIOP and other 'current' projects. ATB

Hi Afric, I've asked Trahar twice in the last fortnight as to current position of the various licenses, referencing Sundance. It's the sort of info that should be readily to hand, as it's very preliminary due diligence stuff. I'll post when I get a reply. ATB

Hi Afric, If you go to the Edison research paper of 12/12 /2011, I agree that they haven't changed, other than now being several years out of date : Edison (research paid for by ZIOC) estimated a worst case scenario of 18% ZIOC interest in a fully funded project, based on assumptions made at the time. However, the introduction of a strategic partner or partners was also recognised by Edison as a potential risk : Xstrata would like ZIOC out of the equation : ..." ZIOC�s replacement is positive as it will allow it to split the multibillion dollar capex, thereby reducing the project�s risks as well as avoiding the execution of the JVA, which, as we mentioned above, is beneficial for ZIOC. While there is a clear risk that the strategic sale may take place below our NPV estimate, we believe that ZIOC is unlikely to compromise on the valuation of its stake in the project, especially given the terms of the outstanding JV agreement...." Seven years on and with no start in sight, I believe that the ZIOC principals are more likely to compromise. Not least because the clock is ticking on their concession rights . Not a 'change' per se, but perhaps more significant with the passage of time. I've asked the company to clarify the position, in light of the recent Sundance Resources issue, and await their reply. HTH and ATB

Hi shaun86, Just parsing your last comment : ..."Gemstar forgot to add that GLEN can finance the project themselves [ but they've not shown any interest in doing so] and ZIOC get an 18% free carry [ I think you'll find the '18%' figure goes back to the Xstrata days, in a very different environment; it's not something that's been agreed by anybody]. Gemstar also forgot to add in the last RNS ZIOC stated Stage 1 is waiting on port news [ and power; and rail], but Gemstar only mentioned the 'small scale project' because he/she wants you to think that's their only option ['option' suggests ZIOC are in the driving seat, the reality is that they have to wait on others and will then have the 'choice' to accept, decline or try to negotiate a better deal. Until someone else makes the first move, ZIOC doesn't really have much in the way of choices]. ZIOC have some say in the 'small scale project', likely because they're the only ones interested in pursuing it as an interim measure, but even 'small scale' will give rise to the fundraising issues that gemstar refers to. See also recent press re Kore Potash KP2. ATB