Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Enough water has gone under the bridge to put it out there now that July last year info I had the privilege of receiving was that T39 was flowing naturally really well , no artificial lift at all and that there was lots of associated gas. That came from employees at the well head.
Would we still be fighting tooth and nail if there was no commercial resource spending hundreds of thousands in legal fees? Would we have declared a DOS? Would we have had someone buying into NIKO, BH on board and at least two lenders seemingly offering between $60 -$150 million around December 2018 at competitive rates? Would Hope want shares?
Why would Zaza and SN have accumulated 2.7 billion shares over the years ?
Alot of the above has been RNSed.
I dont have a problem with Zazas shall we say half truths and the silence for a year or more, all necessary ...
We have heard the last thing to sort is the length of the PSA and that should be concluded by the end of the month so not long now,infact it could be any day.
Personally I enjoy MP s posts and thank him for all the effort he puts in . Even if he is 10% right i will be happy with that.
Hang in there...
GL all the LTH ..
It seems clear to me that the Arbitration needs to be resolved fairly for both sides. If either side feels hard done by litigation could drag on years and years. Both sides will want to start field development asap and will have to compromise.
Mole had found a hole in the accounts and was going to confront Zaza after the last investor evening (I was told) in Oct 18 however Zaza did a runner. That is going to come up now. I have no idea how big the hole was.
Confirms it has happened? That's not what we last heard but fits in with Zazas comments about January being critical.
Levan... the last we heard was that he left in June/July so why would he be talking about arbitration if it has nothing to do.with him ?
If this goes wrong theres only one person to blame and that's Zaza.
ODR ,
I am taking the press releases with a punch of salt however if its true we have laid off all the employees it could be because the SM have seen enough and that they have asked for operations to be ceased so as to close down any employee leakage of information.
As for our arbitration case it is incomparable to any other in my opinion. We have spent £400 million and been working in block 12 twenty two years.
The arbitration was stated 2 years ago and I can see why. Not enough was achieved by FRR . what has happened since then we know little about but someone does and the fight for what has been found out is ferocious.
To clarify, earlier I said it's clear the oil is flowing , in hindsight I should have said it's clear the oil (and gas) flows commercially.
I hope the truth is we are just waiting for the length of the PSA to be agreed.
Seingrad,
Thanks for the reply. Food for thought there. I'm talking nothing for granted.
What I would say is if we were banged to rights as Regdik said we were why didn't the GOGC go straight to court , surely you would if you were convinced you were going to win with a watertight case ?
Arbitration is more of a negotiation usually.
I have no doubt the oil is flowing ....
The arbitration will be sorted and even if we are left with 10% that's many multiples of the closing price of the SP. I do think we will come out of it with much more than that. If you haven't google the meaning of arbitration...
I can wait another year if necessary to get those kind of returns.
It's another year of worry for the shorters. I know what I have lost if it goes under.
Anyone who is unsure of alwaysbeclosings position just needs to click on his posting history. He does not have a good word to say about any of the shares he posts on.
He is a shorter who is locked in here terrified about what might happen .
Texas, California dont matter. It's the arbitration that does.
Just the length of the PSA to sort and Zaza said January.
I think the article was cobbled together. You could say that some things were hard to interpret because of translation. What cant be lost in translation is the fact the writer didn't put a currency sign in front of the 70....
I have dismissed it .
Hope would have known that if we lost the arbitration case that he would end up with nothing so why force us to move the asset ?
I dont believe Hope has backed down to see how arbitration goes....
Something does not make sense here.
Some good points there Ivy.
Zaza said a sledgehammer to crack a walnut . The GOGC want 99% back. Perhaps the arbitrators will find somewhere between the two. I think both sides will have to give up ground .
The arbitrators should see what we have achieved over the 20 years and look at the reasons why progress has been slow, I e political unrest , oil price , Hope blocking funding. All of those three reasons should be behind us now but were not when the arbitration process was started 2 years ago.
The way we found out that we were in arbitration was very disappointing . We found out not from the company as we should have at the time it was brought but 3 months later from TW ... so wrong ! We also know Mole found a hole in the accounts which is terrible and Zaza did seem to avoid him after the last investor evening in October 2018.
We know nothing about what has been happening in the field since about April 2018. Huge progress could have been made with the help of BH . Zaza did say we produced 500,000 barrels last year that's alot of oil from 3 wells with a controlled choke . We also dont know what's been happening with the gas. We could have a new gas well by now.
We hear that 84 employees have not been paid properly for 11 months , if that's true firstly they must have been promised something worthwhile in order for them to stay also there must have been work for them to do.
Where are we now , no one knows. We are all guessing. What is obvious is that there is something worth fighting over . The USA certainly think so !
Just a few thoughts
It does not feel like a "sledgehammer to crack a walnut" situation that's for sure. That comment was a long time ago now and seems like the arbitration situation was under estimated by Zaza along with the fight Hope has put up.
We did hear that Zaza said the last issue to resolve was the PSA whether that was hearsay or official I dont know ?
It seems to me that the key is we are a USA registered company .
Great analogy Pyro . Thinking about it what you wrote is likely to be quite accurate in my opinion.
To summarise the article...
We owe the workers about $1 million.
We are producing oil or why do we need the workers.
70 million in an unknown currency probably $ is being finalised.
84 employees on $250 a week , $1000 a month .... $924 000 total approx.
quote (apparently) ... in the summer unbearable heat , winter it was cold.
Producing oil ,
70 million investor money .
Fake news IMO or terribly translated.
Tsbs
We are all just guessing I suppose , some with half glass full some with half glass empty.
I.personally have seen plenty of positives from what's been sleuthed
The PSA is the last piece .
ODR ,
With respect I think you are wrong. I think things are ticking over. I think we are running at a minimum production wise, asked to do so by the SM so not to arouse too much interest.
It's a theory !
Was that non payment of employees official or could it have been fake news? If it was official then it seems to have gone away at the time of year that you would think they would step up any action.
Zaza said we made $1.2 million profit. That would say to me the employees were paid as profit is obviously after all expenses have been paid.
It does seem a low profit on 500,000 barrels . We were told the extraction costs were $12 a barrel , even at $40 a barrel profit that would be $20 million profit surely enough to pay all the employees, legal fees, YA and Hope.
The interest payments were quarterly. We only ever hear about the first missed payment. Another 5 at least would have been due by now. Perhaps those other 5 have been paid and the first missed payment set the ball rolling on dealing with Hope, getting him to show his true colours and getting him off the board.
I do think there was a plan put together by Zaza and Steve. I dont think they anticipated the fight Hope put up . I think they were advised by their legal team that Hope was banged to rights however it didn't work out that way which could be a reason why we did not pay the legal fees (that seems to have gone away too ).
Zaza is absolutely right. It's not about how it flows for the first 2 months at all. It's about how many years/decades. The SM would have worked out how long the resource will last by now and will want the PSA to cover the life of the field.
We are told the PSA is the last piece of the jigsaw to sort. My first thoughts were that would be a simple process however on reflection that could be a longer task to agree.
Zaza said January . The end of january is 36 days away .
All we have to do is hope we are still on the bus and that Zazas 1 billion shares means that we are.
I'm sure the SM or majors will have done their calculations and be wanting the PSA to last as long as the resource does. Might be 50 years initially