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Oh and as Mercuria is also the principal creditor behind the £12 million loan, revenues "post satisfaction of the hedge" absolutely do have a whole lot to do with them.

Push, as I've said, you're not too good with figures.

I'm presuming that ANGS has paid Mercuria in addition to the £3.3 million raised in Dec to part cover the two missed hedges. That'd be deployment of revenue PRE satisfaction of the hedges, then.

V-I-I, given the spot market price of gas at the time (c. 300p+ per therm), the cost of making good on those two closed hedge contracts (Jul 22 and Aug 22) could be as high as £5.8 million.

Having said that, since October and at current reported production rates, ANGS would seem to be generating revenues of around £1m a month from the sales of produced gas, after each individual month's hedge contract has been settled. I imagine that Mercuria as the hedge provider would have first dibs on any of that revenue left after field capex/opex has been taken into account.

So that £3.3 million raised possibly does come close to finishing covering off the 2 missed hedge contracts.

There clearly wasn't much spare cash left over after that though, which is why Paul Forrest got given 60.6 million shares in lieu of the latest £1 million instalment he was owed for the 49% acquisition.

ANGS does seem to be meeting the hedge or thereabouts since Sep last year. That's apparently true.

However, it is not (currently at least) generating enough revenue through produced gas sales to cover off its various liabilities. And that's the primary reason why it had to have the Xmas megaplacing.

As detailed in the Dec 19th RNS, It needed to raise funding to pay Mercuria off for the two months of missed hedge production , those being Jul and Aug 22 - and that's despite it having previously announced that those two missed payments had been agreed to be deferred into H1 2023. As George had to admit, no such agreement was ever reached.

Simultaneously and as the same RNS makes clear, it had to give Paul Forrest 60.6 million shares in lieu of the staged £1 million payment that he was due for the acquisition of his 49%. ANGS clearly didn't have the cash to pay him.

As it stands, on top of any G&A expenses and specific field opex costs, ANGS still has liabilities of £10+ million on the loan at an increased interest rate (currently around 16.5%), up to a further £5 million to Paul Forrest for the acquisition and £1.4 million on the Knowe CLN. All of these liabilities need paying off in full by mid 2025, a period during which the hedge remains in place.

The question remains - can it do all that without a successful sidetrack?

...and of course the only rational, nay permissible view to hold on ANGS is one that is completely positive, which adds nothing but pro ANGS sentiment...

I believe I am right in saying that, in contradiction to what it first announced a fair few months back about the hedge having been "successfully renegotiated/deferred", the company recently had to row back on that statement and announce that actually no agreement had been reached at all re deferment.

@CaravanBoy, if today's movement has got you to a price that you're happy to exit at, then I'm pleased for you (genuinely). You're not one of the "guaranteed multi-bag banker! 5p by Xmas!" disingenuous happy clapper brigade, so it's all good.

I'm sure longer-term PIs with inevitably higher averages will have seen short-term rises all too often before and so aren't counting any chickens at the moment.

I must say that TheLadyOfAIM has played her usual "start a rumour, get the cheerleaders to shout it to the heavens and make a quick 10%" blinder. Nice work, I suppose... if you've got the stomach for it.

On;y you, Asher, could make three factual errors in an eight word post... it's a gift, I tell you.

Look if you want to get all excited about tiny and inconsequential things like a trade with a total value of £1,728, by all means feel free. Having such a mindset must make your showers so much more fun...

151.7k shares, eh? Stop the presses and hold those front pages!

I'm really not sure that a transaction with a total value of under £1,800 is anything to wave pompoms about too vigorously...

CaravanBoy, although it is without a doubt true that I've never been chuffed with ANGS's permatendency to issue statements and projections that turn out to have been at best wildly over-optimistic in terms of massively underestimating both costs and timescales, what I've actually and repeatedly said is that this is all and only about how much gas and by when.

To date that literally crucial question still hasn't been answered. Hopefully it finally will be within the next few weeks - and that will at last provide some much needed clarity, one way or the other.

Dan, but why would someone sitting on the ANGS board feel the need to protect capital by turning shares into cash like it's going out of fashion if everything is about to come up roses?

Surely if George's repeatedly optimistic statements about ANGS's imminent uber-positive future are to be viewed as anywhere near gospel, PF would be hanging onto every single one of his hundreds of millions of shares in anticipation of the multibagger that is allegedly just around the corner?

Sorry, but to me, it's very clear that if the frequent major tranche seller is PF, then things don't look that clever with the good ship ANGS. At all. Hence why PIs better hope that it's not him.

Loys of people seem to be hanging on George's statement a while back (in an answer to an IQ) that the company "is already paying down debt".

Well sure, even if the company put a fiver towards its various creditors, that I suppose could be classed as "paying down debt" - but is there any actual evidence of any meaningful reduction of the company's several liabilities?

It has its £12 million loan plus interest at currently 12%+ to pay off by mid 2025 and it has the Knowe £1.4 million CLN to clear within the next few months. Plus the balance of what it owes Paul Forrest for the acquisition (up to £6 million by March 2025).

Now sure, the company has cleared some of its liabilities very recently - but at the expense of PIs, courtesy of the last dilutative megaplacing back in December. It had to pay Mercuria for the two months of hedged production that were entirely missed (remember? That small matter that George told the market had been successfully deferred, only to have to annouce a couple of months later that oops, no it hadn't)., And it had to give Paul Forrest over 60 million newly issued shares in lieu of the first staged payment of £250k cash that he was owed.

"Already paying off debt"? I'm really not so sure at all.

It might well be Paul Forrest (and if it is, he has hundreds of millions of shares to sell, if he wishes). But that would then beg the question - why would someone with such a good inside track on what's really going on sell now? Probably best for PIs to fervently hope that it isn't him, I reckon.

Just as a matter of small amusement, the latest estimate for sidetrack completion as tweeted by ANGS yesterday now gives a total timescale of 114 days. By my reckoning, that's 16 weeks and 2 days... so it looks like George and his executive dream team are the ones from Mars after all.

As to challenging the Balcombe ruling? I suppose those more ruled by obsession than realism may decide to have a costly pop at getting the appeal decision overturned, but as others with much more experience in this field have already commented, I also imagine that to do so would be an utterly futile waste of time and money.

But then again, when has common sense ever played any part in guiding the actions of the Sarah Finches of this world?

@Dan, I never forecast a further placing two weeks ago?

In fact, I'd have been gobsmacked if this had happened, so soon after the last one on Dec 19th? GL has already taken the total shares in issue up to nigh on 3.5 billion shares with that last round of placing and shares in lieu of cash to Paul Forrest (and God alone knows how many warrants now on top).

ANGS cannot possibly need to raise more cash already. I'd suspect that the next raise (whenever it comes ) will be stated as being related to funding further explorations at Balcombe... plus of course "to fund general running costs". It would obviously be a million miles better for the Sfby sidetrack to be successful and for 'post any liability repayments' gross profit from that used to fund any further asset exploration - but knowing ANGS, that's probably not the way it'll go.

Howey, possibly. I was genuinely staggered to see a poster refer to Balcombe as "the real jewel in the crown" for which they'd been waiting. I mean, seriously? And at this late stage???

First off and contrary to the 'pantomime villain' narrative that many try to apply, I categorically do not want ANGS to fail at Sfby. I want the sidetrack to be a success, to deliver a significant amount of extra gas (even if it doesn't turn out to double existing production) and for ANGS to benefit from the additional revenues, pay down its several varying obligations and start delivering a profitable return. If this goes according to (latest) plan, as I have said, I'd see an SP of around 3.5p being within the bounds of possibility.

My less than glowing opinion on the company is based purely on its track record of wild over-optimism and over-egged exaggeration, which has to be seen by any rational viewer as misleading. Classic example - we're now in week 16 of the sidetrack attempt (a reasonable timescale). But George worked himself up into a state of fury when that timescale was mentioned, claimed anyone iestimating this was 'from Mars' and insisted it wouldn't even take half that time...

I of course acknowledge that ANGS has not (yet) made any noise about further exploratory planning permission being granted at Balcombe. You and others will know that the company has historic form in terms of spouting with usual over-exaggeration about 'the next greatest thing', before they've established which way existing projects will fall - so I will be more than a little interested to see how the company phrases this news.

regardless of any potential at Balcombe (which unfortunately ANGS has spouted arrant nonsense about before now), it goes without saying that George and his executive dream team would by far be best served proving that they can profitably and successfully exploit just one of their assets, something that ANGS has to date entirely failed to do.

Longer term ANGS watchers will be well aware of the company's habit of very rapidly changing horses when they know things aren't going well while riding what they have spent much time promising is their latest nigh on racing certainty. One would hope that this isn't the case. Again. For the umpteenth time.

The thing with ANGS is that the title "jewel in the crown" seems to endlessly get moved around its various "assets" as needs dictate?

It was Brockham, then Saltfleetby, now it's Balcombe (again). I wonder when things will change again as reality becomes unignorable? Presumably, it'll then be Lidsey's turn (again) in this seemingly endless game of pass the parcel...

As everybody with more braincells than toes already knows, the second compressor being provisioned is very largely meaningless, without there being a shedload more gas available for it to compress.

That 2nd compressor becomes totally necessary and 100% crucial if the sidetrack proves successful. But unless/until it is so proven, that 2nd compressor is very largely irrelevant (as the company itself has effectively already stated).

So news that it's due to "come online" is by itself sadly very largely meaningless...

Which begs the question... just why the company is trying to spin this and puff it up?

PS presumably PIs would really hope that Paul Forrest is categorically not the one selling shares like it's gone out of fashion.

He'll certainly have a very good idea on what's going on at Saltfleetby and he's also got a humongous amount of shares to get through (including an extra 60.6 million he accepted in December in lieu of the cash Forum's owed on staged payments for the 49% of Sfby), if it is him looking to derisk and turn more of his shares into cash.