Member Info for Jiving

R-Dunc, the article appears to show a picture of complete political uncertainty across the Nigerian government's system of approving & renewing oil licences at the DPR (Headline - Politics clouds fate of 30 oil-fields...), so is the situation at the NNPC going to be any different & if so why ? If political chaos & uncertainty is affecting the DPR queue won't it also similarly affect the NNPC queue ?

The reason I focus on the queue is because Cathy referred to this for the first time in her Sunday email. This is the NNPC queue and she is the one who has confirmed we are in that queue, so she clearly sees it as relevant. My concern is where we are in the NNPC queue, at the front, the middle or the end hence my use of numbers 7,8,27,28 etc? Cathy in another email essentially does not feel able to give further information & actually I think she is right it is Arthur as CEO who should be giving us that information.

R-Dunc thanks for the reminder. Reading your latest link it seems the situation is possibly worse than even the most pessimistic of us could imagine, maybe maybe somebody might do something after the 2019 election. We have no information on the length of the NNPC queue or how many projects there are in front of us, in a previous email I had speculated maybe we are No 7 or 8 but it seems we could just as easily be No 27 or 28, maybe even No 47 or 48.

We desperately need a responsible CEO to explain where we are & give some guidance to our way out, of course that doesn't mean giving us a precise date or revealing intricacies of any negotiations (if there are any going on at all until we reach the head of the queue). We have gone from the 2017 Arthur OPL226 grand plan with a spreadsheet showing detailed activity week by week leading to production, to being given absolutely no guidance whatsoever for 8 months except meaningless monthly platitudes from IR.

From that article;

"According to data from the Department of Petroleum Resources, the main regulator of the Nigerian Petroleum sector, by June 2019, 53 oil leases comprising OMLs and OPLs would have expired. Ibe Kachikwu, minister of state for petroleum resources, on July 3, updated the list saying there are now 80 open acreages currently under review."

Thats quite a potential queue.

The problem with that email Harry is that it tells us absolutely nothing new. Cathy views her job as not being to inform shareholders but to fob them off with platitudes.
1."Everything is moving along as quickly as possible" that tells us absolutely nothing - are we one step ahead of where we were in April or two or none (suspect the latter that we are somewhere in a 'queue' and those ahead of us in the 'queue' are being dealt with, when our turn eventually comes we hope we will be dealt with)?
2. "That's all we can say at this time" - which is nothing, they have no news because Arthur has decided not to update us & also because we are stuck somewhere in a 'queue'.
3. "Arthur is excited about the future." So what, again it tells us again absolutely nothing new. Why is he excited, have we passed a certain stage in the NNPC approval process, or is he just excited because his monthly bills are being paid, of course no news just empty words.
4. "Consider no news is good news" - seriously what drivel, no meaning to it whatsoever. OK so we haven't been explicitly rejected by NNPC yet. Great.

I want this thing to get permission as much as anyone - a year since my first buys. I don't see how we can possibly infer anything from Cathy's email regarding where we are in the queue, we might be next we might be number 7 or 8, she has used similar adjectives regarding Shoreline & 'progress' in her emails for most of this year. As shareholders we should not have to guess or infer, she needs to simply state where we are in the queue.

Arthur will know from Kola where we are in the queue, and indeed may well have known since last autumn.

Right so acknowledgment there is an NNPC queue - of course just like any other govt bureaucracy. Now COPL need to inform long-suffering shareholders of our place in that queue, & how many projects in front of us!

Fully agree BigBear2. Unless Arthur has a firm assurance from Kola that NNPC is really definitely coming through in next few weeks its better to bite the bullet sooner rather than later. £2m would see us into next Spring. Better 500m @ 0.4, than 1b @ 0.2, or 2b @ 0.1. Being diluted by a third is no fun but it takes financing risk out of the pic till next year.

I have been in resource shares where this hateful spiralling down occurred - an Aussie gold producer called Blackham, was trading above 20c, then had problems tried a placing around 11c but failed, ended up with huge dilution @ 4c.

Its maddening for LTH that we face another potential dilution, but we are running out of time/cash. Its not reasonable to expect a company to go much below a $1m cash safety net, we have a couple more weeks then I expect a placing roughly on the terms Harry has posted. So its going to be news of approval or a placing.

Oilberta & R-Dunc. Thanks for your comments on the technicalities/probabilities of the Noa-2 drill. It is good (& rare) to have some comments that add to our understanding of whats going on, particularly for the non-oil people among us.

Well I can confirm the 125000 @ 3.249 was a Buy as it was my buy. 10 days ago I couldnt pick up 125000 @ 4.29!

Yep they do come across as a hopeless bunch, we were told PIB was basically a done deal & now it appears undone. apparently OPL226 is not reliant on PIB but it seems the whole NNPC & Nigerian oil regulatory system remains a shambles.

Rift. I am happy to vote my shares for an EGM. I think the Chairman Harald Ludwig (theoretically the Independent Chairman acting for shareholders & above Arthur in corporate structure) could be given a choice of forcing Arthur to make a clear statement of where we are or face an EGM. Somebody somewhere should be acting for us shareholders, many of whom were lured into the company on the basis of a false timetable given by Arthur.

Happy. We all 'know' what we are waiting for in terms of news - either successful trials or new marketing agreements. To get an RNS about a 'collaboration' that seems scarcely worthy of an RNS makes me wonder if its a shareholder fob off because the important news is delayed, hence my feeling of being underwhelmed. Hope thats NOT the case we will of course find out in next week or so if the real news is coming.

Well another RNS would be very welcome, yesterday's was underwhelming.

So PYC went from just under one to slightly over 17p in 2 weeks. I could live with that analogy ie COPL circa 8p two weeks after NNPC. Not saying I would bail as having put up with all the strain & pain of the last 10+ months I want to benefit from the complete development of OPL226, which should put it multiples above 8p.

AIM. What is in Dr M's manifesto means v little when he is in power. The reality is he pushed/allowed Petronas to begin its law suit potentially challenging both the royalty & single company resource control. In practice that means Dr M has put them both in play, the lawsuit is how it is being done to put it at arms length from him, he can claim he is not breaking a manifesto pledge 'its the law'. It is quite possible that even if Najib was in power he would have made the same play.

Panama. Bang off a similar message to IR and see what comes back. Presumably otherwise we next get the next 'nothin happening' with Arthurs covering comments on the next quarterly due whenever - August??

Thanks Copper. Thats a very useful link to an informed commentator, Tom Kirkman. The possibility of two conflicting opinions Malaysian vs UK, I hadn't thought of, in reality the Malaysian opinion is the one that matters on the ground. As Tom Kirkman points out the Malaysian federal court sides with the Malaysian federal government on the whole, at this stage from Sarawak's perspective their best hope is cutting a new deal with Dr M in return for their political support. I dont see them getting 20% royalty and independent control.

BigBear. The issue of the $0.3m on Canadian costs is all I believe part of the mystery of the unexpected placing in autumn 2017 & the appearance in the accounts of a $2m trust fund, that was later released from trust in April 2018. As ever Arthur diligently makes sure we get literally zero information about what he is doing with our money. Putting it together it seems Arthur got wind of an opportunity in Canada, this required as part of the bidding process the deposit of $2m in trust, that money came from the unexpected autumn placing. Besides the money in trust there were presumably other costs involved in the process of which the $0.3m is a part. COPL did not succeed & and as a result the trust money reverted to COPL general usage where it is now being used to pay the monthly bills. This is of course, conjecture on my part, just trying to piece the parts together.

The company does not even have the approvals from NNPC to do anything yet, so there is no offtake finance or any other type except funds from equity placings. COPL has to pay the bills until NNPC comes through, until that time its only source of funding is the fast falling cash reserves from the last placing. As I clearly stated last sentence first para "If NNPC happens the equation changes but we still have no idea when that is." It is fine to challenge & disagree Rift that is what the board should be about it is not acceptable for you as just A N Other member to seek to shut down a topic you don't like by abusing the posters. You not anybody else is in conflict with 4-5 posters because you not them have a bad attitude.