Member Info for GreyPanther

Hello again Tacuma. You are quite right regarding the lack of Europa director purchases over the longer term. I wasn't aware of their recent investment history here, or rather the lack of it, until you pointed it out. As you say, it can't have anything to do with closed periods or the like in EOG's case. In answer to your other Q, I have absolutely no idea why anyone would want to bur £2 worth of shares in any company. Could these small purchases perhaps be a book tidying up exercise by a market maker, or something like that? I currently hold no EOG shares, although I have held them in the past in a very small way. I am, however, invested in Egdon, RBD and UJO as you can guess from my posting history. That's because I'm interested in the UK onshore oil scene, and I like their licence portfolios more than EOG's nowadays. Also, I felt that the onshore players' share prices might hold up better than those oil companies whose assets are mainly offshore, and where the development and lifting costs are so much higher. I believe these costs currently exceed the oil price in many areas such as the North Sea.

I really hope the UKOG directors have got shareholders' main message by now, particularly where it concerns SS's position. By that I mean that his resignation is overdue. UKOG's interim results came out on the 30th and there were some revealing comments regarding the HH-2Z well. Reading between the lines a bit, but who would have thought that natural fractures in the Kimmeridge Clay Formation would produce some oil, and then mostly water. There's a really huge surprise! Why didn't UKOG's geologists / engineers warn SS that this is a fairly frequent phenomenon - even while they poured money into the hole? Or was it something else that failed to staunch the flow of water?

Hi JD and BH. Regarding RBD's deal with Humber , I think the OGA generously allows itself 30 working days to deal with a licence transfer request. This would take you to Tues 7th for the WN deal. I think that Google reference to "the law firm that did the deal for Humber" might be about something else, most likely the Humber-Egdon financial settlement concerning their Biscathorpe interest which was only announced on 24 June. I don't know when that will be resolved since it may not involve the OGA, being a legal matter.

Hello Tacuma. I can't think of any really good reason why you shouldn't write to Europa's acting CEO Simon Oddie if there's something you want to say. He's a sensible person, so why not be bold and identify yourself too? If I were in his shoes I wouldn't waste my time replying to an anonymous correspondent who might not even be a shareholder. Good luck anyway. I suppose the directors might, just conceivably, be in a "closed period" when they can't buy any shares because they know something the market doesn't yet know.

Hi there BlackHopper. The Humber deal was that Reabold will pay £1.4 million cash plus £2.1 million worth of RBD shares for Humber's 16.665% WN interest. There was a separate Humber deal in which Union Jack paid £0.5 million in cash for Humber's 12.5% Wressle interest but it's not particularly relevant to us. I think the cash and / or shares are only paid over when the OGA gives its approval to each deals. Let's hope this is only a formality.

Equinor's recent Saltend news is extremely encouraging for West Newton but that's only if Rathlin and RBD are patient and sit tight for a sensible offer. I suppose they may already be negotiating with Equinor or maybe with Ineos. IMHO Equinor wouldn't have said what they did if they hadn't already negotiated a supply of gas from the Southern North Sea, and I assume it must be pretty well tied up. If Equinor are interested in WN I assume the negotiation would be with Rathlin, the WN operator, in the first place. What I definitely don't want to hear about is a premature deal like Humber's recent sale of 16.665% in WN for only £3.5 million in cash and shares. It was probably a "distressed" deal by Humber but it valued the whole of WN at only £21 million, which wouldn't do much for our share price!

Hi masterclass. Thanks for providing the interesting info on acidisation. IMO it's not helpful to other investors if some of us get over-excited (well, not just yet anyway) about the well needing acidisation. It's a very frequent operation when a well has been suspended for a long time. So frequent, in fact, that I wonder ADX didn't have the equipment on stand by!

Romania: ADX Energy provides update on well test operations at the Iecea Mica-1 well, onshore Romania "Romania: ADX Energy provides update on well test operations at the Iecea Mica-1 well. Workover Rig has been mobilised and rigged up according to schedule. Production Equipment is being run into the well with perforation equipment required to initiate well production and flow testing. Flow Testing is expected to commence next week. Further Operations Updates to be provided following the commencement of flow testing. Workover Rig has been mobilised and rigged up according to schedule. Production Equipment is being run into the well with perforation equipment required toinitiate well production and flow testing.
Flow Testing is expected to commence next week. Further Operations Updates to be provided following the commencement of flow testing."

Mirasol. Thank you. That certainly makes a lot of sense regarding Premier's involvement in Egdon. If you don't follow Union Jack, or even look at their LSE board, you might like to see a slightly edited exchange I had there yesterday about Humber. It could conceivably be relevant for Egdon when their time comes to drill a further well or a sidetrack at Biscathorpe:
(GP) Humber will only get their cash when the OGA approves their WN deal. And then, I assume, their Wressle deal with UJ must also be approved. But will they still have any cash left when the Biscathorpe-2 sidetrack is drilled? I assume they once had plenty of money to invest in their licence interests or the OGA would not have allowed Humber to acquire them in the first place. Something might have gone badly wrong since then. Perhaps some of their other investments went pear-shaped. Not only did they default at B'thorpe but I reckon they were getting close to that situation at WN and Wressle too. it's only a guess, but they sold off the last two interests in pretty short order. And now they've signed a settlenent agreement with Egdon. It's all very convenient!
(JamesParsnips) Why wouldn't Humber have the cash for Biscathorpe? They now have £1.4 million from Reabold plus 350,000,000 Reabold shares. That should be more than enough.

Hi JamesP. Humber will only get their cash when the OGA approves their WN deal. And then, I assume, their Wressle deal with UJ must also be approved. But will they still have any cash left when the Biscathorpe-2 sidetrack is drilled? I assume they once had plenty of money to invest in their licence interests or the OGA would not have allowed them to be acquired by Humber in the first place. Something may have gone badly wrong since then. Perhaps some of their other investments went pear-shaped. Not only did they default at B'thorpe but I reckon they were getting close to that situation at WN and Wressle too. it's only a guess, I know, but they sold off the last two interest in pretty short order. And now they've signed a settlenent agreement with Egdon. It's so convenient!

Hi there Stebol and gkb47. With regard to Humber (not my favourite company, in fact) and their future 15% participation in Biscathorpe, it will be a case of once bitten, twice shy for Egdon and its other partners. They are unlikely to be willing to put up with a repeat Humber performance, even for a reason like not having the cash, etc. I'm not sure what they can do to protect themselves but no doubt they will be casting their eyes over any operating agreements that might already be in place. Licence operators don't often have to look at these agreements unless problems rear their ugly heads, so the OA must be a well-thumbed document by now, or maybe it's being beefed up right now to prevent future Humber "accidents". Now they have sold their West Newton and Wressle interests, I think Biscathorpe is all they have left except for a small interest in the Burton on the Wolds licence. This is also Egdon operated and is not now thought to be very attractive as it's partly in shale gas country. So Humber can't afford to screw up again, I would hope. Well, time will tell.

Hi scoredagainsteps. It's an odd story, but Premier are invested in Egdon because they have chosen to remain an investor for many years, and I really don't really know why. In 2010 Egdon acquired EnCore’s onshore UK assets (including the Biscathorpe licence which Egdon had applied for unsuccessfully in 2008, but it was awarded to EnCore and Montrose) and an interest in the offshore Ceres gas field. In exchange for those assets EnCore received a lot of Egdon shares which were much more valuable at the time. EnCore was acquired by Premier in 2011 and Premier chose to remain a shareholder, keeping a seat on Egdon's board which was previously held by someone from EnCore. Well, that's what I think happened in a few words.

Today’s news throws light on the settlement with Humber but, as the terms are confidential, we may never know all the details. Even so, it’s possible to have a guess since UJO’s RNS tells us more than Egdon’s. UJO have acquired 3% of Biscathorpe from Montrose Industries for £115,000. That’s about £38,300 for each 1%. They also obtained a further 5% from Humber. UJO have therefore upped their Biscathorpe interest from only 22% before the dispute to a respectable 30% now.
There’s probably now enough published info to tell us something about the settlement terms. Based on the Montrose deal, Humber’s 5% of Biscathorpe was probably worth about £191,500 if it was on the same terms. If it was, it may not have been enough to settle UJO’s share of the default bill since Egdon’s 2019 accounts (published in mid Nov ’19; Note 17; Trade and Other Receivables) tell us that at that time Humber owed the partnership a total of £780,000 of which £327,200 was due to Egdon. If you split the other £452,800 (which must be UJO’s and Montrose’s share) according to their original 22.0% and 22.2% interests, then UJO was probably owed about £225,400 and Montrose about £227,400.
It’s quite likely that Egdon received their £327,200 wholly in cash as their 35.8% equity is unchanged. UJO gets 5% of Biscathorpe from Humber plus possibly a small sum of cash. I estimate this might have been about £33,900 (£225,400 less £191,500) if you use Egdon’s Nov ’19 figures. However, there will also be licence expenditures and other costs that must have arisen in the meantime, so I hope they got some of that back too. The cash refund will come in handy for the partners. It may not be much but it will help, especially for Egdon. I know it means that Humber is still on the licence with 15%, so I can only hope they behave better in future. Anyway, it looks like a decent result all round to me.

Today’s news from Egdon and Union Jack throws some light on their dispute with Humber and its recent settlement. The latter is very welcome but the terms are apparently confidential, so we’ll probably never know all the details. However, we know from Egdon’s 2019 accounts (published in mid Nov ’19; Note 17; Trade and Other Receivables) that at the time of those results Humber owed the partnership a total of £780,000 of which £327,200 was apparently due to Egdon. So Egdon could have received £327,200 in cash since their 35.8% equity seems to be unchanged, unlike UJO’s which has risen to 30%. There are also the licence expenditures and other costs that must have arisen in the meantime, so I hope they got some of those on top. As a wild guess, Egdon might now be £375k to £400k better off as a result of the settlement. I’m sure that cash will come in handy, even if it represents only about 0.12p per share at best. Still it looks like a good result to me, even if it means that Humber are still on the licence with 15%.

Thanks Mirasol. As you say, Egdon’s 2019 accounts show they have two large institutional shareholders: Petrichor Holdings with 33.99% and Premier Oil with 15.08%. These two hold 49.07% of Egdon between them. Premier Oil has Tim Davies as its board representative, but for some reason Petrichor doesn’t have one. This is unusual for a shareholder with more than a 30% interest. The ultimate owner of Petrichor is George Yates, judging by Egdon’s 27 April RNS. I assume they are (or were) reasonably happy because they previously shared licence interests with Egdon in the Wessex Basin. I wouldn’t be at all happy, though, if I were in Messrs Yates' and Davies' shoes when looking at Egdon’s share price.

Hi Brighteye. As Heid says, it was Biscathorpe-2 that turned out not to be a dry hole after all. On re-evaluating the info from the well and the seismic data, oil was found in a different target, the Dinantian carbonate, rather than in the Wesphhaian sandstone which was "dry". If you want to see what they realised later on, then UJO's 30 March RNS is worth a read. If you click on the "LIve RNS" link above you can then scroll down to see it. It's quite an encouraging read, in my opinion.

Hi gkb47. I assume Rathlin had the B1 well drill programme designed (and agreed by their partners) quite a long time ago. Wouldn't this have to happen a long time before drilling? They must also have had to obtain numerous consents before they could drill. So it might already be too late to make anything other than fairly minor changes, maybe like deviating the well if they hit a snag. Mind you, there must surely be some flexibility in the various Govt. consents to allow them to make changes to the programme while drilling. So, I'm guessing a disappointing EWT result, even if it precedes B1, won't make much difference to the programme. But this is only a guess on my part.

Why is this board so quiet? I wonder if it's because there's not much happening at Egdon. It's not a poorly run company - in my opinion anyway. But look at the number of licences they own. It was about 40 the last time I looked and, in the last year, they've issued only about 20 RNSs if you exclude those reporting shareholding changes, price monitoring extensions and the like. By comparison Union Jack have far fewer licences, and many of them are shared with Egdon except for their big one at West Newton. They seem to have a lot more going on if the number of their RNS is any guide to activity. In the last year UJO seem to have issued about 30 RNS, if you ignore those categories I did for Egdon. I do realise that issuing a lot of RNS is what many small, especially ASX exploration companies tend to do every time they drill a few more feet. But I'd say that the result for UJO has been to generate potential shareholder interest and movement in the price. Unfortunately it's not always positive movement, but there may be a lesson for Egdon here. What do you think?

The way things are going at the B1 well site, I wouldn't be very surprised if that well was drilled first. Then, assuming it might be mainly the same crew that do the EWT, it could follow B1 rather than happening before it. Does that make sense, or will the crews be entirely different for the two jobs?

Hi BlackHopper. TryTry has indeed answered my question, but only up to a point. Having an energy report is certainly a good idea when about to buy a house. But if I was thinking of relying on one I would make sure that the report described the house I wanted to buy, and not some "notional" as yet unbuilt house, and whose design was based on a selection of possibly similar houses around the world. However, since we are still very undervalued, I'll now shut up. All the best.