Inside story. Eytan answers questions at the AGM26 Oct 2021 10:32
Found on another chat board.
there were no other shareholders present and so I was able to question Eytan Uliel for over 35 minutes. The formal items on the agenda were all passed without incident. Eytan explained that the Interim 6 monthly figures will be published this Friday and this constrained him from answering financially sensitive issues. That said, he did make some observations about the financial position.
These are the answers to my questions:
The Bahamas
The new Government is sympathetic to the ambitions of BPC/Challenger. These are good omens when Eytan has to resolve the outstanding licence fees where CEG has an excellent argument for a significant reduction from the headline figures being bandied about by the previous hostile Government.
There have been friendly exchanges with Brave Davis etc but the formal report that has to be made on the outcome of Perseverance One, whilst ready, has not been delivered. Eytan is letting the new Government get bedded in first but then he will be going to meet whoever is by then identified as the most appropriate persons to sort licences and to plan the way ahead.
Farm-In – Bahamas
Eytan explained that the informed market reaction from the big boys in exploration has been almost "so what" to the disappointment of Perseverance One. They know and expect frontier drilling only rarely to strike oil first go, even when as in the case of BPC at the time, the chances of success were up to 35% which is very high. As has been mentioned before, the North Sea had a string of dusters before the first strike and the rest is now 50 years of history and still producing.
Because the company is forbidden to share the full details of the Perseverance One outcome (with particular regard to the Jurassic level) until the report has been delivered to the Government, neither the shareholders nor third-party suitors can see the details but Eytan said that the broad ambit of the reasons for optimism had been published already by the company – see my previous posts.
Because of the depth and difficulties of drilling that have been encountered, Eytan said that a farm in with drilling would need to be involved with one of the majors such as Shell or Total etc and that this would take time.
Sentiment
Eytan explained that the oil majors appreciate that there is an increasing demand for oil and expect this will continue for 20 years which would be ample for Challenger. However, increasingly the company is asked about its ESG position which they have dealt with. A bigger issue arises from the concerted efforts of the GreFen lobby to disrupt fossil fuel business. (Although Eytan did not mention this, I believe it was Greenpeace that recently losd