focusIR May 2024 Investor Webinar: Blue Whale, Kavango, Taseko Mines & CQS Natural Resources. Catch up with the webinar here.
.....is of course, she is a tired old lady, got what she wanted and can now retire to her office and do nothing for the next four years.
You can guarantee nothing will happen with Phulbari for at least six months or the next geo-political crisis. She doesn't want a coal mine, she doesn't want to move tens of thousands of residents so the simple answer is do nothing, say they are instigating enquiries....blah, blah, blah. She can probably 'blag it' for now, borrow some money to pay for the imports and hey, her mantra will be, 'we got away with it.'
Sorry chaps, but this is how it will be.
...the 'straight' and non-corrupt ministers and officials in Dhaka must be hanging their heads in shame and saying 'how did this happen'. ?
We had twenty years to sort out our energy plans and we have achieved nothing except allow a corrupt regime loot the government coffers . The Bunglas have been robbed blind and the only legacy is a series of coal fired power stations which have insufficient coal to even run, never mind supply MGW to the grid.
2024 will see further escalation of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza but with the addition of Taiwan to the conflicts. The oil, gas & coal markets will determine who has access to the fossil fuels and the Bunglas will sit at the end of the queue regretful of all the opportunities wasted to source their own coal. Hasina, having won a rigged election, will resign as the situation worsens.
......over the course of the last decade PetroBangla has been drilling for gas in the Bay of Bengal. They dispensed with their very capable partner, Chevron, saying they were too expensive and Bangladesh would go it alone from now on.
In ten years how many successful strikes have PetroBangla made - let's guess. Five, Ten, Twenty, Fifty................Nope - Nil. Not one successful strike in ten years. They probably should have stuck with Chevron.
Where PetroBangla should keep away, is with the mining of Phulbari.
Nasrul Hamid, Chowdury, Anu(s) Mohamed and Hasina should be barred from having anything to do with day to day managing the project - hand the whole venture over to Beijing and let the experts run it.
Cheers mate, I looked at the website one earlier and hoped there was more detailed info available.
No problem, we are moving into uncharted waters and all will soon be revealed. I find Dyani and DG Info as quite an asset for our stability, as they have substantial positions they won't wish to lose if there is a fight for ownership of the mine..
Searcher - thanks for all your updates, much appreciated by all of us on this board.
Share ownership of GCMPLC is always a little difficult to establish, from your understanding would you see the main parties being Polo Resources, (30%), Dyani (16%), DG Infotech (15%) and Eagle Star (7%). Appreciate any feedback but understand if you don't accept individual requests.
HT8
,,,luvvly, luvvly jubbly - what a great read and Forza India - lots of new coal fired power stations please, The demand and generation numbers are staggering........all that lovely coal being used too.....not so sure about the Indian coal though, we have the Bollinger....they have the cheap Rose
..........good article from the BBC about the election next weekend and that it's just a 'shoe-in' for the autocratic Hasina, with thousands of Bangladesh activists and voters already in jail.
The USA and EU acknowledge there are issues, 'talk the talk', but know nothing will be done except a bit of posturing by Washington and Brussels.
The BBC do highlight that she is being re-elected into some major political problems, particularly FX Reserves and the dissent might start quite quickly with inflation pushing 10%.
Mr Quader tells 'big porkies' - what about the 10,000 BNP activists jailed for just asking for a properly conducted, un-rigged election which is fair and unbiased.......
According to joint convener Majed Ali, the 101-member convening committee will form a full-fledged district committee through a conference at a later date, although the exact date for the conference has not been determined. ie. nothing will happen and nepotism prevails. You wouldn't want one of them on your team, they just pose about setting up committees and achieving zilch.
I was always convinced we were, unfairly, going to be the losers, but the tables have turned quite dramatically in our favour. A few weeks ago, courtesy of Ser or Papp a list was published detailing all the short-term rental agreements. From memory there were over 100 of these contracts and in a number of cases, not a single volt had been generated but capacity charges were levied.
We also had the Adani fiasco developing, possibly one of the biggest corporate scandals in the history of Bangladesh - looting the FX / Treasury and making demands for the payment of multi million dollar invoices, in US dollars only.
The bankers from he IMF have seen it all before, so any ideas that the two crooks Hasina & Hamid can pull the wool over their eyes can be dismissed.
It's unlikely Hasina will impress the IMF, instead they will recognise a runaway train now out of control.
There is always a Plan B, but Plan A , the go-ahead to open pit mine at Phulbari, could save the Bangla economy. It needs to be if initiated quickly and if the Chinese supply the funding, the engineering expertise and do 'the heavy lifting'. It might just happen.
It is possible that this may be coal excavation only, the generators side-lined for the future. Coal is what the Banglas are desperate for and a minimum of 45-50,000 tonnes needs to be mined and transported daily. This is serious mining. The IMF have to make decisions which Hasina is going to find difficult to accept, but her options are seriously limited.
We need a decision, a cast iron direction of travel.
Dr Zahid Hussain, an independent economist, who had served the World Bank, told the FE that the $1.3 billion would last at best six weeks.
'Think we all know big changes are coming' - so what are these big changes and do they involve the massive restructuring of the energy division and the absorbing of Phulbari into a new JV of PowerChina / Bangladesh.
Exit of GCM ?.
This is classic Hamid, totally hopeless - 'If we can start exploring now, it will take at least four to five years to start mining from a coal field. We are thinking about how to expand coal mining in Bangladesh. Four or five years or a decade - the Bungla way. is the rubbish way
They have fifteen years of data and committee reports and all they managed to do was to lose 145,000 tonnes out of the backdoors at Barapukaria long-wall mine.
The Bunglas need to make a decision to give the go-ahead to mine and then step back and let the Chinese get on with it. No vested interests, no more brown envelope bribes. We need The PowerChina way.
An office in Phulbari and a fair deal for the locals to move out. This project needs to be operational open-pit mining within 24 months. Many on this board will remember the kind of figures bandied around two years ago. $13.2 billion costs for 6600MG mine and super-critical generators. How would the Bunglas find this money.
Totally impossible - step forward Beijing
Each day we need at least 40 million US dollars from Bangladesh Bank to meet our payment obligation. But we’re getting 5-7 million dollars a day”.
For now, the daft old biddy and her lapdog Hamid will ignore it the crisis. The reality though is, do the opposition party(ies) actually have a candidate to fight the election....I fear not an like Putin is simply banning any dissent from the electorate, by jailing them.
These generation plants are costing millions just in standing charges and capacity charges, so no progress is being made in repaying the capital costs of construction.
She could of course resign and walk away - that's an option...
......be nice to go into the holiday with 3p nailed on the board - lets see what happens on what I guess, will be a short day of activity.
Hasina and her ministers completely misread the geopolitical signals, not surprising when favouritism and nepotism dictate who is actually in government.
Hasina doesn't want Bungla coal or the extractive process, she wants coal vessels docking, discharging their cargoes and sailing away. She thought the price would always stay
Fusion, I have been invested in this share for 15 years and remember the number of times I regret seeing an article in the Sunday Times telling the story of this huge deposit in Bangladesh called Phulbari. The Bengal rifles had got a bit trigger happy at a rally but never mind this coal deposit was going to be a game changer and the shares were about 700p, from memory.
I was hooked on the story and over the next fifteen years missed opportunity after opportunity to buy, then cash in and exit. I dived in and out on numerous occasions, mainly bad timing,
but I'm still here.' Current holding is 30,000 GCM @ 29p and 30,000 Polo @ c. 3p.
Its easy to dream of exiting at 50p or 300p or even 700p but that is the stuff of dreams.
Or is it ? Pappik will remember a copper miner called First Quantum, because he has mentioned it before. As the markets crashed in 2008, the miners collapsed. First Quantum with a very tight free-float retreated from forty quid to 500p.
Then China went on a spending spree, cities, roads, railways and 28 airports all to be built. First Quantum turned as the copper price climbed 8000, then 9000 then 10,000 and 11,000 dollars per tonne. Up went the FQM SP peaking at 9500p.
They did a 5 - 1 stock-split, but nothing really happened again for five years.
Five pounds to ninety-five pounds is an amazing story and it proves there can be a big payday if you get your timing right.
I think Tang will have engineered the situation at GCM so that he owns the company next Spring. Hasina will dawdle, the generators will lie idle due to lack of fuel and Phulbari will become the hot topic.
We, the shareholders should be worth 100p per share but I think the offer maybe nearer 10p.
All to play for still though we may need the LAPD........'are we feeling lucky, punk'
....the engineering and logistics are a massive challenge, but a day does not pass when there is another photo of a string of hi-spec pylons straddling a mountain range in China or a river bed in a **stan in central Asian. As a partner we could not have had a better choice than PowerChina.
Distribution is a problem in West London (National Grid) and in Bungla too. Its not too challenging to produce the MW but getting it to its destination is a big challenge and Bungla does not have the distribution network required. This will be a problem for whoever produces the power.
We do have a heavyweight skilled partner in Power China. but you can guarantee Hasina is messing about trying to play off various parties against each other.
Luvvly, luvvly jubbly - the problem is that as soon as Hamid opens his mouth, it is just side-stepping, procrastination and basically waffle.
This guy know how it really is: FBCCI Senior Vice President Mustafa Azad Chowdhury said, “The government has to take a politically bold decision to extract coal from the coal mines found in the Rangpur region. If necessary, the population of the area adjacent to the mine should be rehabilitated and coal should be extracted there on a large scale. By doing this, the pressure of the country's energy crisis can be reduced a little.” Offer all the locals a 'big wedge' and you won't see them for dust. They are all being poisoned by the toxic water, the airborne pollution from Bara next door - take the money and run rather than be an 'early death' statistic........
.....excellent article Searcher, the increased demand running up to 2030 is phenomenal and Bungla will get 'short shrift' as it will not have been paying its bills. Remember too, that much of the coal Bungladesh from is buying from Adani, is the poor quality lignite (brown coal), which is both dirty to burn and with poor calorific value. Hamid & Hasina were completely tucked up by the Indians
Would the real new owner of Phulbari please step forward - we can hope !!
Daily Messenger: The country will need $ 80 billion for energy sector by 2030. What will be the sources of investment? Have you chalked out any plan?
NasrulH: I have earlier discussed about the investment challenges. The government is ready to invest as necessary. But we should keep in mind that nowhere in the world the government alone could meet the investment needs. It is not also possible for us. Sounds like Beijing already has the chequebook out and right when Modi is starting to think about re-election. What a coup if PowerChina breeze past his plans and nick Phulbari in a JV with us.