Member Info for jimtheknow

ross, everyone is in agreement an equity fund raise is possible, does this surprise you? It is highly unlikely though this will be made available direct to any PI's as they already have buyers lined up for this equity should they need it. The amounts attributable to each funding option are stated in a great number of BPC issued documents. Also, the majority of us BPC LTH's voted for a 1.8bn share issue authority, of which we are only about 30% into (if you discount the CERP dog), so new equity would be of no surprise to us.

If you care to read BPC's published information in detail they tell you what elements of their funding options will generate what volumes equity e.g. the worst case for the Bizzell CLN will see c. 580m new shares issued. The Facility is a bit different and not an exact science because it is linked to prevailing share prices at the time of conversion.

After the CERP merger I think most of us are expecting there to be something in the region of 4bn shares issued at the time of spud, if they beat this then great, if they exceed this by a long way then why on earth did we acquire CERP?

harel, the only way this will go sub 2p again (prior to drilling) is if another black swan event happens or there's a big COVID second wave, otherwise this will be managed so as to not breach 2p for 5 consecutive days, enabling maximum funding options are maintained.

Zag, the 15th October, 15th November and 1st December dates are all in RNS's put out by the company i.e. BPC BoD.

Dreamland99.

A first indication on funding will be announced on or just before the 15th October.
Another decision is likely to come on or before 15th November.
The IceMax will set sail late November.
All funding avenues are likely to be known by 1st December.
Drilling is most likely going to start in January 2021 and it'll be no more than 45 days.

Is this a good enough timeline for you?

harel, nice to meet you and for you to suddenly appear at this late stage with those wise words of wisdom. Your humble opinion doesn't appear to align with those who have far more knowledge of the subject though e.g. the Directors and Executive of the Company. The following is taken from page 31 of BPC's Annual Report:

"When considered alongside a variety of other potential funding options available to the Group, including concluding a farm-out arrangement or equity funding raise, the Directors are satisfied that the Group will be able to raise the additional funding required to execute the exploration well in satisfaction of all licence requirements."

Below is a link which contains a lot of very useful information that may change your views, rather than guessing. Have a read, it's very comprehensive and good.

https://d1ssu070pg2v9i.cloudfront.net/pex/bahamas/2020/06/07133046/WEB_BPC-Ra2020.pdf

Don’t know how others are experiencing this site but for me all of today’s posts have been wiped. Odd.

repeated on page 20, not 21 - sorry, finger slip.

For all those still getting their knickers in a twist as to whether BPC will be getting the Stena IceMAX or not I strongly urge you to read Stena's "INTERIM REPORT FOR THE SIX-MONTH PERIOD1 JANUARY – 30 JUNE 2020". Here's a link for those who are lazy.

https://www.stena.com/app/uploads/2020/08/Stena-AB-Group-Q2-2020.pdf

On page 15 of their report you will find the following statement:

"In May 2020 Stena Drilling signed a contract with Bahamas Petroleum for the drill ship Stena IceMAX regarding one firm well (45 days) commencing in December 2020/January 2021."

It is also repeated again on page 21 of the same report.

So there you have it in black and white straight from the horses mouth that the Stena IceMax has been assigned for use by Stena, to BPC, commencing exactly when we expect. Is that enough of a smoking gun for some? It obviously won't be for ross.

ross, keep reading the document and if you’re not so selective about what you read you will find a paragraph from the CEO which exactly answers that - answers it unequivocally.

Post it when you find it. I’m not doing all your leg work for you.

Night night sugar plum.

ross, a number of days ago you made the 'picks & shovels' comment as if to imply Stena were a very focused company. As i have been so kind as to put a reasonable amount of effort into answering some of your questions today could i ask you to do some more in depth research on Stena as a company and come back to me and tell me if they really are just a 'picks & shovels' company as you state. I feel they are maybe a little bit more sophisticated and multifaceted than that. As i'm in that kind of mood here's a link to the Stena Sphere:

https://www.stena-drilling.com/about/stena-sphere/

The following branches of Stena caught my eye:

Stena Property
Stena RoRo
Stena Metall
Stena Finance (seems interesting)
Stena Adactum (also VERY interesting) https://stenaadactum.com/en/about-us/

My feeling is that if you were to open the Stena locker you may indeed find a pick and a shovel, but i think you may also find a; screwdriver, hammer, tape measure, ladders, torch, drill, spade, pliers, snips, spanners, wrench.... They feel a very versatile company to me, but what do i know.

Do you still stand by your 'picks & shovel' comment?

I think it's fair not to move on until we have provided a bit more insight into ross' concerns.

For me the Bizzell CLN is the easiest to answer as little has changed with this. It was true as of the 31st Dec 2019, the end of the reporting period and on the 1st June when the Annual Report was issued, that the Bizzell CLN was not available to draw down and that still remains true today. However, the conditions precedent that are required to unlock this CLN are what i described as the Catch 22 conditions, if we don't satisfy these we most certainly aren't going drilling. We have made some progress on the conditions precedent e.g. unconditional rig contract now signed and BPC have instructed their broker to bind the insurance policy, we are also now in receipt of the Environmental Authorization. I believe the hardest components of this are now complete so i feel the rest will be a formality e.g. signing of contract with Well Services provider.

Now to the 'Facility'. The conditions for this were breached so in defense of this being available i will say the following. The Facility was originally constructed in such a way so as to facilitate draw downs in the early part of 2020, around the time of drilling operations but with the onset of COVID and the postponement of drilling to late 2020 this required restructuring, this occurred on the 25th March 2020. On the 19th March the share price breached 2p (closed @ 1.65p) and continued to remain below 2p, breaching the 5 consecutive day rule on the 25th March, the day the restructuring was agreed. The other condition of the Facility required "no material adverse events subsisting at time of draw-down". To me it therefore feels extremely odd this financial backer would continue with this restructuring whilst conditions were breached.

Finally i would draw your attention to some of the opening words of our CEO in the Annual Report, which was issued on 1st June 2020, deep into the COVID crisis and long after the discussions with financial backers will have taken place:

"Shareholders should be equally encouraged by the relatively strong financial position we are in as we look forward to drilling operations at the end of 2020. In response to Covid-19 we acted quickly to implement appropriate cost control measures to preserve cash while we wait for the dust to settle, and to quickly reach revised agreements with our service and equipment suppliers and providers of our various finance arrangements. As a result, we currently have retained significant cash reserves, and preserved all relationships with backers intent on flexibly supporting the Company once operations are able to resume."

The importance of his statement here on preserving relationships with backers intent on flexibly supporting the Company can not be understated i would say.

I hope this helps assuage your concerns.

PI, well said.

Ah ross, I think I may understand your problem, you don’t appear to understand what you read.

Where exactly did I acknowledge BPC didn’t have access to funding? I said we are not funded because we don’t have the money in the bank, but I wrote a reasonable bit about believing they will be able to access funding, for me it’s not an issue and that’s why I’m in now.

‘Usual caveats’ is not misleading when talking about going drilling offshore. The caveats I refer to are things like needing a drill rig, needing insurance, etc. These are classic Catch 22 caveats for the BPC project, if you don’t believe they can fulfil these then there is a bigger problem than funding. They secure these, they get the tools to drill and subsequently unlock funding. This is a question regarding whether anyone thinks our BoD are competent oil men isn’t it? Again, if you don’t believe this then this is not a share for you, which it obviously isn’t. It feels like you need to invest in government bonds. An NS&I account or Premium Bonds feels more your level of investment. I think Martin Lewis is highly recommending NS&I accounts at the moment, but you’ll know that already.

I was going to finish with have you had chance yet to research and gain a high degree of confidence in your share buying power for when the day comes but I’ve just realised my error, there’s no need for that, the market will be plenty liquid enough to purchase 8000 shares at c. 5p or 6p when the day comes.

ross, what answers do you want exactly? I have spent years and any hours reading pretty much everything there is to know about BPC and also Bahamian daily news papers, Australian news outlets, etc. I now know more about Stephen Bizzell and Mark Carnegie than i ever thought I would. I'm pretty well under the skin of this and I don't mind helping people out where I can but people still need to go away and do their own research and i'm not here to carry those that are too lazy, nor entertain any antagonists.

The BPC issued information on funding is fairly comprehensive and detailed and it does carry the usual caveats of not guaranteeing anything at this stage, this is not unusual given they could be severely prosecuted for being misleading. So given that and until the day we do draw down on the funding, all we can do is our own research on how credible BPC are in their funding rhetoric and therefore how likely they are in having access to it. After many hours research my conclusion is that BPC are more likely than not to be credible in what they say so I have taken full advantage of the lower share price that comes with not having unequivocal guarantees on funding and filled my boots to the tune of many many millions of shares. They may not get the funding, we wait and see. This is my researched, educated gamble.

You, however, require greater certainty which is your prerogative so if you wanted to hold the same amount of shares as me it will likely cost you £100k's more to do that if and when that certainty on funding and is provided. My average is now very low though as I've been doing this a long time so I can ride the dips without losing a wink of sleep.

I can assure you in that you are right at this moment in time when you state we are not fully funded for drilling as we don't have the money in the bank, but that would also be foolish of the company to have that at this stage. However, assuming all conditions are met and all contracts are honoured as defined, we should have that money when we require it. We may never require it if the farm-out happens.

If that golden nugget of news does drop and you want to be involved in this then you better have great faith in your ability to buy quickly as that good entry point will be gone in a flash. Maybe your time is better spent obtaining faith in your purchasing power for when that eureka moment happens rather than continually doubting the credibility of legally binding RNS's from the company?

I'm much happier being in this than out of this at the moment. If I wasn't in I'd lose more sleep knowing I could wake up to a 7am Farm-Out RNS rather than being in and waking up to one that said there was going to be some heavy dilution. I voted for 1.8bn dilution so I couldn't really complain could I, it's a win-win for me for the moment.

ross, I can help you here with some wise words. This share is clearly and obviously not for you so you should call it a day and try and put your money to use elsewhere for better returns. You have far too many doubts and if you went on to lose (more?) money I would hate to think what your disposition would be like.

You've asked some great questions and kicked the tyres, as everyone should, but you know yourself now that BPC isn't right for you. Listen to your gut feeling and move on, you know that's the right thing to do and you'll be able to potentially say you dodged that bullet. Asking the same questions over and over again is just going to produce the same answers.

We all know what the company has been like with regards news and communications over the years, it’s been terrible at best.

That aside, I do think no news, however frustrating that is, is not a bad thing at this moment in time. We are at such a critical junction with many critical pieces of the puzzle being juggled into place that if there were some bad news it would be hyper price sensitive information and would need to be made public quick sharp. I’m definitely going with the “no news is good news” philosophy at the moment.

Experience of BPC also tells you that just when you think things aren’t going as you would expect and you’re starting to pull your hair out they hit you with an RNS, it’s often been the case.

A lock of information must mean everything they have stated previously with regards their mission plan must be going to plan and no need to report blow by blow. It feels logical to me we’ll get 3 or 4 comprehensive RNS’s before 1st Dec now, starting around mid October.

It is highly unlikely to happen but something I think would be fantastic around this moment in BPC’s life would be if a handful of key members of the BPC Board and/or Executive, say 5 or 6 of them, made a token gesture and put their hands in their pockets and personally bought say, 1m shares each. In the grand scheme of financing this company it matters not a jot at all and is completely insignificant, but what a positive little story and boost for BPC i feel it would be. What’s £25k to them to each of them? Surely nothing and the message it would send to those watching would be a vote of confidence in their company, fantastic!

ross, it is absolutely about believing them. I have stated this in other posts... BPC haven't gone around and mumbled something about funding under a cough, like trying to disguise a fart. They have front and centre gone out and done roadshow after roadshow stating they have the ability to access funds in a measured and proportionate way as and when they need it and that they are trying to improve on that funding in various ways. There's absolutely no way they can go back on what they have said, they have been very clear and unambiguous in stating funding is available. I think one poster compared it to having a mortgage in principle, it's the same thing.

We have already paid Bizzell a good number of shares to 'secure' the CLN baseline funding, those shares to Bizzell may be for nothing if we get a better option e.g. farm-in. The conditions precedent for accessing the CLN are only what you wold expect to go drilling and security against a loan e.g. insurance, rig, etc. There's nothing unusual here.

As for the family office 'Facility', the people putting up this money doubled their potential support to BPC at a time the world economic environment looked a little uncertain, they could have easily backed away but they went in 100% more. If you believe they don't believe in this company, the BoD or the project then that is your opinion, mine is that they very much believe in tis project and are willing to put significant money where their mouth is. If this Facility were no longer available then that would be an RNS'able piece of information, this has never came. Believe what you want but these people understood the macro events gripping the world and stood by BPC in that transient very uncertain period.

The only thing I still have a hump on about is the CERP deal, I don't think it represented value for money at that time. I do believe though that this BoD aren't stupid and therefore they knew something better would come from it and I'm inclined to believe this is because a farm-out is very much in play.

If you are risk averse, keep waiting, it's your money and your choice.

Its much easier for Stena to confirm and give very close approximations on dates for the Repsol contract as it's a lot further in the future and the ship will have undertaken work for BPC first, it's more difficult for them to get off the pot for the first contract in the queue with all the work that is required to be completed on the ship. Because of that I don't expect imminent news on the BPC contract until Stena are sufficiently into their reactivation process and they have clear visibility of an end date for that. I would love to be proved wrong but I doubt we'll get confirmation of the ship for at least another 2 weeks.

As for funding, if greater certainty on this is what some people crave then they are going to have to wait for that and likely pay the premium above todays share price that commands. You either believe the BoD on this or you don't, if you don't then you probably shouldn't invest in this share at all as this would be a pretty seismic thing they are lying about. I believe them on funding and barring another black swan event I believe they will drill, and I believe in the geology, so I think todays price offers good value.

People should remember the IceMAX has not long since finished drilling off Cyprus, I don’t think the Titanic would have suffered the same issue if its maiden voyage had been to Ayia Napa.