Member Info for gonoles

https://www.abc.net.au/radio/darwin/programs/breakfast/breakfast/11503850

Here is the link to the radio report that says the Blundy case has been settled.

Fidelity jumped 10% at a he end of the day as someone picked up some shares. Almost 500k shares today. Waiting for a few more of these days. LOL

I think the few trades you see are the folks on this board getting nervous. We are talking thousands of shares not millions. I don't think anyone has any inside info. I would assume that the message could be we also have approval and we are moving the rig. Either way -- I bought at $6 so if it drops 4 cents to .12 -- will buy up some more. Either now or six months from now -- I think I will be ahead in the long run.

Whether it is this year or next year -- I plan on living and still being around and just bought some more today at a low price and will continue to do so. I remember buying shares at over $6 a share and if we make it back up to half that amount I'm retiring. LOL You can't worry about this day to day. When something happens it will happen and they will let us know. Everyone keeps trying to read the tea leaves to come up with an opinion. Relax it is a great summer day and get out and enjoy it.

It now falls to Mantashe and new Environment Minister Barbara Creecy to go back to the drawing board to promulgate petroleum exploration and production regulations that pass legal muster. It shouldn’t be that hard. It merely requires them to separate the environmental regulations from the petroleum regulations, to promulgate the former under the authority of the environment minister, and the latter under the authority of the minister of mineral resources.

Let’s hope they do so speedily and competently before the entire oil and gas industry gives up on South Africa and we lose the economic opportunity forever.

Strategically, of course, that is exactly what the anti-fracking activists want. Expect another legal challenge, even if it’s futile, once the new regulations are issued. Van uitstel kom afstel, as AfriForum would say. Postponement leads to cancellation.

“Policy constipation” turned out to be a great phrase, and there’s no end in sight for this sorry show.

His comment -- not mine. LOL -- but I agree.

On this basis, the judge found that the minister of mineral resources did not have the authority to issue the environmental provisions contained in the petroleum regulations, and because it would be impractical to excise and set aside only those provisions, the petroleum regulations were to be set aside in their entirety.

If you’re going to come to an agreement about environmental management, as the ministers responsible for the environment, mineral resources and water affairs did in 2013, and if that agreement leads to legislative amendments, then new regulations must be written in terms of the amended legislation. However good the provisions of the petroleum regulations, that they were written under the old legislation is a major blunder, which will cost the country more wasted years and more millions of potential oil and gas investment.

Both AfriForum and the TKAG falsely linked the ruling to their environmental fears about hydraulic fracturing.

AfriForum’s website trumpeted the victory in a press release that has been widely reprinted in the media, unmarred by any attempt at actual reporting. In it, an AfriForum spokesperson says that “this is a major victory to ensure that our environment is preserved”, adding:

“We must ensure that future generations have a place in which to live sustainably. We cannot afford to take short-sighted decisions.”

It says that the judgment was proof that the government had to consult with organisations such as his and the TKAG instead of continuing to make wrong decisions.

It did no such thing. It only proved that the government should take cognisance of the law when making regulations. It did not say that those regulations were in any way deficient, nor did it prohibit future decisions about shale gas exploration.

The TKAG website doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2016, but CEO Jonathan Deal is quoted in the AfriForum press release saying that the ruling justified the reservations that AfriForum and TKAG had about the regulations and fracking technology, adding:

“South Africa simply does not have enough resources to handle this industry – water is a resource that one simply cannot waste.”

It did not justify any of the reservations the group had about fracking. It only addressed procedural matters.

Taking its cue from the AfriForum press release, the media mostly used the word “halt” to describe what happened to shale gas exploration in the Karoo in the wake of the judgment. That is too strong a word. “Delay” would be more accurate.

In a major setback for the government and the several oil and gas companies that applied for exploration permits, the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Treasure the Karoo Action Group (TKAG), AfriForum and a group of landowners and farming organisations. The judgment set aside the Regulations for Petroleum Exploration and Production, gazetted in 2015 by the then-minister of mineral resources Ngoako Ramathlodi on the grounds that it included environmental regulations that the minister had no power to make.

The judgment was delivered purely on procedural grounds. Besides a high-level description of the potential environmental risks, it makes no determination on the magnitude of the risks, the justifiability of these risks in a wider social and environmental context, or whether the petroleum regulations were sufficient to mitigate these risks.

There is considerable irony in the fact that the environmental provisions contained in the petroleum regulations were everything a bona fide environmental watchdog could want. They were very detailed and covered every eventuality, from the initial environmental impact report to the final well decommissioning and closure. They included provisions for water resource management, mitigating impacts on astronomy, well design and testing, fluid and waste management, emissions, dust and noise.

The court combined two cases. The first, known as the Stern case, was an appeal by the minister of mineral resources against a Grahamstown High Court judgment which held that the minister was not empowered to make the petroleum regulations and that their making was procedurally unfair. This appeal was dismissed. The second was an appeal by the TKAG, the primary anti-fracking lobby group, and AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights organisation which funded the litigation, against an earlier Gauteng High Court ruling that declined to set aside the petroleum regulations on grounds of legality. This appeal, against the minister of mineral resources and the environment minister, was upheld.

The crux of the matter is that while the petroleum regulations were being drafted in 2013, an amendment was made to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act. This amendment removed the section that granted the minister of mineral resources the authority to make environmental regulations, under which the petroleum regulations were made. It inserted a new clause that makes the minister of mineral resources responsible only for implementing environmental provisions in terms of the National Environmental Management Act. That act makes the environment minister responsible for “setting the regulatory framework and norms and standards”.

To be continued

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2019-07-08-shale-gas-exploration-further-delayed-by-appeals-court-judgment/
Activists and landowners opposing the exploration for shale gas in the Karoo because it involves hydraulic fracturing won their appeal to have the petroleum regulations of 2015 set aside. It won’t halt the process, however. It was a purely procedural matter and in no way reflected on the environmental risks of shale gas drilling.

Six years ago, in 2013, I warned against the obstructionism of shale gas activists, saying South Africa can ill afford litigation delays. Issuing exploration licences for shale gas in the Karoo had already been in process for several years at the time, and objections by activists against the use of hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as “fracking”) were crumbling as fast as they could raise them.

I wrote a lot about shale gas between 2011 and 2013 and participated in many public debates with anti-fracking activists. For a one-article summary, this column from March 2012 debunks some common environmental scare stories that permeated the media at the time. In short, most of the fears involving groundwater pollution, surface impact, air pollution, earthquakes or drinking water contamination were either false or wildly exaggerated. The risks were not catastrophic; they would not “destroy the Karoo”. They were modest and manageable given competent regulation.

Since then, there have been three environment ministers and three ministers of mineral resources. Every year or two the government declared that it would go ahead with issuing exploration licences, but they failed to materialise.

In 2018 the present Minister of Mineral Resources, Gwede Mantashe, promised that the exploration licence applications by Shell Exploration Company, Bundu Gas and Oil Exploration, and Falcon Oil and Gas, which had been pending for between eight and 10 years, would be fast-tracked. In November, Niall Kramer, CEO of the South African Oil and Gas Alliance, described the decade-long delay as “policy constipation”, but expressed hope that it would now be over.

I got one prediction wrong, however. I said the activists’ legal challenges would fail because none of their substantive claims about the supposed environmental dangers of hydraulic fracturing held up under scrutiny. For years they did fail. On 4 July 2019, however, they finally succeeded, not for substantive reasons, but by going after the government on purely procedural grounds.

Continued

Saw an interesting thing on Fidelity today. The bid was .234 for 22,500 shares. The ask was .39 for 5,000 shares. No one in between. So it seems that someone is trying to keep the price down by throwing out odd sales at low prices. The smart ones are picking up shares at cheap prices and holding in the interim. Just picked up more shares myself. Just waiting on the drill bit.

So I went on Cenkos web site
https://www.cenkos.com/transactions
And saw they do some work with Oil and Gas companies. Especially saw a lot of companies with Placing noted.

Then I looked on Investorwords.com and was looking at what the term placing means. (not a finance major in college - film and video)
it said --

the act of finding a single buyer or a group of institutional buyers for a large number of shares in a new company or a company that is going public
Usage
the placing of a line of shares
finding a purchaser for a block of shares which was overhanging the market

So in the interest of throwing out theories ----

- So I could see it being something to do with PetroHunter -- especially since Fidelity says I still have 800,000 shares of it -- which owns a % of Falcon -- for which I have no clue as to what is happening to those shares in the bankruptcy courts -- (anyone have an idea)

- I could also see that they are representing someone who wants to buy up the Falcon 30% ownership as they are representing them and the other company retained them

- POQ was in a pub one day and met someone from Cenkos and they said they could help them out if they were retained.

So any and all conjectures could be valid or not -- but hold on to your shares until the end of May -- that way you have a couple of months of drilling going on to possibly see some value -- okay I didn't say May of which year.
Hanging in there -- and buying more shares when I can.

And yes I can remember buying shares at $6 a share. LOL

So I bought ACBFF, Aurora Cannabis, and CRBP, Corbus Pharmaceuticals, through Fidelity. I have been told that if you work for Cannabis companies you can be limited from crossing the border, but never heard of stocks.

Especially since ACBFF is probably going to be traded on the US Stock Exchange in October. I bought several months ago and noticed the wild swings in the past month. I doubled my money so I think it will continue to go higher when it goes on the U.S. Stock Exchange. Read TLRY which is already listed. I have a whole list of them I'm following if you want to private message me, I can send them to you.

I think I bought shares at $7 a share a while back - I know it was when we were only talking Hungary and Falcon was booming. Sold them to take the stock loss for taxes over the years and kept buying at $3, $.30 .05 etc, etc. Just bought another 50,000 shares today, hoping that these low prices are going to see an end with the shareholders meeting coming up. Drinking the Kool Aid and hoping to finally see the light at the end of tunnel and hoping like hell it isn't a train running me over. LOL Keep the faith -- I think 2019 is going to be a great year -- but also said that several times over the past 10 years for other years too. But the creditors aren't at my door and I'm feeling really good about this one. Helps that I also own cannabis stocks too.

Try Breckenridge Bourbon.

March 9 for me at the end of the day Australia time.

Between Australia and South Africa I would say $4.00 a share - since it was over that for just Hungary years ago.

Well while everyone is debating one way or another on this stock, I went ahead and bought another 30K shares this past week, so I think I'm topped up for now. I know BigOnes wants it go down to 19, but it seems to be holding steady. Hopefully we will hear some news shortly and I can say that I've owned stock in this since it was up in the $3 dollar a share range. Just kept averaging down and selling off super high shares for tax losses each year. Hopefully this year I won't have to do it in 2018. LOL Good luck to everyone.