Member Info for Jiving

Bob. I am stuck with XOP stock & the last thing anyone wants happening is downgrading to the more illiquid CSE. Fastest growing is meaningless when it started near zero any growth is big, the simple reality is COPL was booted out of the TSX-V for failing to meet their listing requirements (partic having a share price >0.005) it was not a voluntary move to the CSE.

There is a bit of confusion here. The main blue chip Canadian market is the Toronto Stock Exchange. The equivalent of AIM is the TSX Venture where COPL (as XOP) is currently listed. The CSE where we are being moved to because we no longer meet the TSX-V exchange, is the lowest in the exchange ranking and is for micro-caps. This is a step down not up. I had hoped finance news would come in before we were dropped from the TSX-V, which if it had boosted the share price sufficiently might have meant we could have stayed on in the TSX-V, sadly news has not come through in time.

Anybody any news on what happened or didn't happen today in court? COPL Investor tweeted last time, maybe they will again.

All good points Pettycash, and what a lot of us are thinking. I am particularly worried by the new Chinese owners of NSB - Zhejiang Yatai - being tougher cookies than the old bunch and playing hardball for advantage. I am giving Dan the benefit of the doubt for now but cash/time are running out.

Rktech & Noeasy. It is a farce that surely must end soon. It is not just a private company they are disrupting but also the flow of massive oil revenue for the Nigerian state. Of course it also costs Shorecan for legal advice & representation & of course they have to be prepared for the worst that case proceeds.

According to COPL Investor the latest round in the Agamore saga is due today in Lagos. This was part of the COPL Investor twitter statement on 26 September:

" Unfortunately, Agamore's counsel delayed proceedings again. Next hearing is scheduled for Oct 29."

Again we do need informing of the outcome IF its a charade then its time a judge put a stop to it.

Rktech. We know some kind of buyout has already been offered EM, I believe two offers so far. It seems to be being done via Shorecan so presumably IF that were the case the 20% would go to Shorecan & COPL & Shoreline would then own 50% each.

88e - and with exception of the partial success of IW1 their drills have not proved up a lot of accessible oil as yet. Yet COPL with 40% (maybe 50% soon) of a vast oil rich field in Nigeria is 10% of the mkt cap of 88e even when 88e had another fail & a huge rights issue.

Rift. Let alone the valuations a pure exploration stock like 88e has reached of over £200m at times, ditto a potentially small producer like UKOG.

At £5m we are basically 100% priced for total failure & impending bankruptcy, IF we get SPA/NNPC then suddenly Arthur's grand plan finally becomes a reality and things change fast & big.

Ten bag on SPA or NNPC?
A ten bag from here would take us to some 2p, which we hit a year ago on just a rumour.
But what matters of course is mkt cap & 2p = approx £50m
For 40% of a major (soon to be producing oil field)? Plus a prime Mozambique exploration patch!
Quite seriously given other small oil exploration/pre production stock valuations on the LSE, by NNPC we should be £100-150m +. So 4-6p at least. IF our SP is Schlumberger make that 6-8p or £150-200m.

What the shenanigans over Essar Steel and the billions being talked about has on Essar Mauritius & its stake in Essar Nigeria God knows. I have wondered for some time whether the Essar Mauritius management have pursued their own interests rather than those of the parent/creditors. In particular do the EM team have jobs IF they sell off their 20% in EN, indeed has the delay been deliberate not to get a better price but to keep their jobs going till they can see who buys the Essar parent company?

Wasted precious money & management time on that madness in America instead of focussing on the gold mine. Disgraceful.

Rift. Kola has a number of joint ventures in the oil/gas industry seemingly at all stages. For some time he has held via Shoreline a 17% stake in Schlumberger Testing & Production Nigeria.

Separately he has recently announced a new JV deal with the French construction giant Vinci to gain 51% of a Nigerian company called Entrepose DBN specialising in oil & gas construction.

Kola is clearly emerging more & more as the key guy in Nigerian oil & particularly gas. In particular he is playing a big role in developing domestic gas demand in Nigeria. Schlumberger have signed a huge financing deal for the Anyalu filed (next to OPL226) which is partly gas. Arthur stressed at length the synergistic advantages to Schlumberger are working simultaneously on OPL226. At the time I thought it was just part of the push for the August placing but now I think/hope it could be that Schlumberger is the SP in question for OPL226. In the recent article Arthur again mentioned the name. If if were the SP then of course the implications for the OPL226 & COPL are huge & positive. This is just the kind of name that the NNPC love to sign off on:
http://nnpcgroup.com/PublicRelations/NNPCinthenews/tabid/92/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1037/NNPCFIRST-EP-JV-Finalize-724m-Schlumberger-Oil-Finance-Deal.aspx

Sure I wasn't suggesting they were going to try to deliver gas to individual households but to put gas distribution infrastructure into place means they can substitute gas for oil/other sources in useful ways, such as you suggest producing electricity. Whatever its a win/win to stop 'wasting' gas & Kola is it seems a driving force behind the whole thing. Which could have a knock on effect for COPL of giving us a market for OPL226 gas production that didn't exist before. Pushing the potential value of OPL226 up!

As we know Kola is an extremely smart guy & the parts of the puzzle now begin to fit together.
Nigeria has loads of gas but its wasted, yet ordinary Nigerian need cheap energy.
Looks to me like he is building himself into every stage of the chain.

The Anyala & Madu fields, near OPL226, involving Schlumberger are specifically targeting gas as well as oil. OPL226 also has had historic gas discoveries. So Kola is likely going to be a gas producer.

He has a stake in the local subsidiary of Schlumberger itself. (a big clue as to why fantasies that Schlumberger may be our SPA could be reality). So he is in the gas/oil services chain.

He now has a 51% in Entropose to build the gas/oil infrastructure equipment.

Finally a year ago he cut a $300m deal with Shell to develop gas distribution infrastructure in the greater Lagos area.

Found an online pdf of the Upstream Focus magazine with Arthur's recent interview in it if anyone wants one, also lots of other stuff on oil in West Africa.
https://macua.blogs.com/files/upstream-focus-oct-copy.pdf

I have been avidly topping up the last two days. Unfortunately my broker forces me through the LSE auction system but although willing to pay full offer price I often got no stock on 1m orders.

Arthur's decision to hold that interview with Upstream Online was actually for me the final positive factor. My rationale is that unless he is some >95% sure of financing/SPA/NNPC he would not have done an 'Arthur's Back' interview targeting the global oil industry, what if his plans flopped he would be an industry laughing stock. I also note he has again raised the Schlumberger name, I dismissed his original tease as just part of the 'pump & dump' spiel, but now he has again raised the name in an industry publication (ie not aimed at mug investors) it makes me think maybe that really is the SPA!. Think of the 'Buffet' effect that would have on an announcement. I am feeling positive for the first time in over two months, hopefully this time with cause.

Market cap of some £5.4m, with still some £2.5m cash left from placing, so valuing huge stakes in OPL226 & the Mozambique gas field at under £3m. The day of the announcement the rise here is going to potentially be astonishing in % terms, remember back to a year ago when it went to some 1.8p on rumours not reality (for an oil drill way smaller than now planned) !

BTW did you notice in that article Arthur referred to it as OML226.

Agree completely that Essar Energy ("EE") is a minuscule part of the equation from Essar's perspective, they are fighting over billions at the highest level & EE is peanuts. But EE & EM what is their rationale, they must be planning for a future in administration (writing has been on the wall) if they are looking to survive as an independent unit how does that effect their thinking & rationale, at this stage their motivation may be different from parent company.

We have to leave it to Arthur, he was quite a driven, determined, confident guy in his August podcasts - like he 'knew' how it would all fall into place. Lets hope all that all that has happened is we have lost a couple of months & now it will all fall into place as he outlined then. Nobody can say of COPL shareholders that we haven't earned our profits....

Hope to God you are right Jay,and Arthur pulls this off with no further aggro from EM. However of course we don't know EMs rationale, they sure have behaved very aggressively & caused massive disruption to a process we think/hope they want completed. There must have been a chance that their threats could have caused the service provider to pull out, they didn't know for sure that it would proceed as normal after the 9th October. I am more optimistic than a week ago but still fear another EM nasty can't be ruled out.

No Easy. If there is any COPL shareholder - short, medium or long term - who hasn't turned to alcohol at least once in our voyage with Cap't Arthur, God help them whats wrong with them?