Member Info for Jodonne

I suspect Simon, Destitute and some others here were fans of Thatcher, if they're old enough.

Note the diametrically opposite way that her Tories and Norway's socialist prime minister(s) developed their oil resources.

In addition she sold off state assets and public housing to her mates and distributed what's left to the already well off.

The result is a Britain in serious decline and both public services and infrastructure underfunded and maintained.

Norway nationalised its oil resources and developed them on socialist principles: that's why there have been opposite outcomes there and the U.K.

To make matters worse, she dragged Blair (if it were needed!) and now Starmer on to the same terrain so that there is no way back.

Those of you old enough might have visited northern and Southern Ireland in the 80s and 90s. You will recall the very noticeable deterioration as you ventured south; now it is the direct opposite!

Sic transit gloria mundi!

James Simon

"Farage 100% behind Trump"

Behind and below, I'd say!

Can anybody confirm or refute (with some evidence) Davey50’s assertions below re the amount of debt versus cash?

Many thanks Bill from Bristol!

I found all I needed on UK.investing . com / providence / historical data.

If any former LTHs wish to annoy themselves, or if they happen to spot the Bronze in their headlights on a quiet road, they can find that on June 20, 2008 pvr was 850p. There are no suitable emojis yet!!!

(PS. I worked with a Bill from Bristol, Portishead I think, when as a student in the early 70s I helped dig the holes which became the Liverpool Metro. Not you?)

I bought some of these back in the late-Os. I have switched brokers since and most can't find, for tax purposes, the amount I paid initially.

Does anybody have a reliable source for Bey/Providence prices from 2009-2013!

And also a record of any share splits that took place during its long and colourful life?

Many thanks for any help!

Where's Crusty when you need him?

Panch

He took AEX off the bucket list a few years ago. Said he was keeping Solo/Scirocco on it and that would give him access to Ruvuma!

That turned out well!!!!!

I'm sure it's had nothing to do with Brexit!

Sharehead

Not a prediction; just a correction of someone writing that the broker’s note showed 300% upside from today!

200% upside max!

Thanks for that Crusty. It's weird that with three active brokers all I can buy is 137901; to buy anymore I'll have to find another broker!

CP, I wanted to buy 600k directly, nothing complicated ;-)

A question, if I may.

For various reasons, I use 4 brokers: KBC/Bolero; DEGIRO; T212; and eToro!

The first 2 will only allow me to sell, T212 will only allow a total of 200,000, and eToro don't recognise it.

Does anybody else have this problem. And can anybody explain why a broker thinks I need saving from myself?

I have around 6.5m but would like to top up at these prices.

Phoenix 3
Alan Curran, who is coming on board as an interim CEO, has a lot of relevant experience over his 40-year career, going back to working as a petroleum engineer in the 1980s. He doesn’t, how ever, have experience of the Celtic Sea and is clearly coming in solely to manage the other consultants, NRG, which in turn retains RPS. The immediate problem Providence is facing is that having done its ‘K site’ survey last autumn – a precursor to deter mining a drilling location – the company is now waiting for what is known as a lease undertaking on Barryroe, which is to be issued by energy minister Eamon Ryan. Given his Green credentials, Ryan has so far managed to avoid issuing the licence to enable Prov idence to move forward, despite the fact that the Government is committed to ensuring that all existing licences can continue to be processed in the ordinary way.
On May 19 in Shannon, however, Ryan said: “Oil and gas exploration has no place in Ireland’s energy future.” Given the current global energy crisis and Ireland’s reli ance on imports for 70% of its gas and 100% of its oil, this statement could come back to haunt the minister. It would appear that for the next decade Ireland is going to need an awful lot of oil and gas and the the development of Bar ryroe may be seen as crucial. Even out to 2050, the UN in tergovernmental panel on climate change advises that the world will still need 40% of current oil production and 55% of its current gas production.
Europe as a whole currently depends on Russian gas for 40% of its requirements. If Vladimir Putin doesn’t cut this off com pletely, the EU itself is committed to reducing Russian fuel imports by two-thirds by the end of this year. This will leave Ireland mostly dependent on the British supplies over the winter, when it could become seriously expensive.
It could be that Larry Goodman understands the importance of Barryroe and believes that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will force Ryan to push ahead with the granting of the lease undertak ing to Providence. He may also know that the company will need $65m to drill the two wells that will allow the central Barryroe area to deliver and he would be well placed to come up with the readies.
n the meantime, Menton has had the idea of changing Providence’s name to Barryroe Offshore Energy. It is unclear what the point is, but the more pressing reality is that the shares are currently trading at just over 4c, at which Providence is capital ised at just €45m.
If Barryroe does get developed, the shares, as Goodman understands, will be worth well over 10 times the current price

Phoenix 2
Not too surprisingly, perhaps, this £2 company failed to deliver the goods and in July 2021 Plunkett fell on his sword and was followed out the door by Linn in October. Happily, for his seven-month stint, Plunkett still got €106,000, while Linn trousered an impressive €475,000 for his 10 months. Jimmy Menton joined the board in May last year, before taking over as chairman in July 2021. While known as a highly competent senior suit when at KPMG, he can’t have too much of an insight into offshore drilling operations. His other director ships include St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, Lisney auctioneers and CWSI Security.
While Boldy continues to look like the prefect CEO candidate, having been through all the surveys of Barryroe and is probably more familiar with the discovery than anyone else, he was not the name unveiled last month as the new interim boss at Provi dence. Instead of bring ing in Boldy, Menton initially retained the small British oil and gas consultancy NRG Well Management International – set up by Andrew McKay to specialise in well examination. No doubt it is a competent operator but does not have specific knowledge of the south Celtic Sea basin.
It looks as if Menton paid NRG €200,000 for the work it did in the last four months of 2021, a rather chunkier rate than the mere €60,000 pa Boldy is currently paid at Lansdowne. For example, NRG carried out a static and dynamic modelling study of the key Basal Wealden A sands in Barryroe to assess the reservoir performance and likely recovery factor, and also examined the development options. This is all work that Boldy could have delivered in a few weeks. Consultants RPS Energy had previously carried out an assessment of the Barryroe field in 2013, when it came up with gross reserves of one billion barrels of oil and a 35% recovery factor. In other words, this looked like a 350 million barrel project. In its latest report, however, it was (quite sensibly) asked to focus only on the central segments of the field, close to where the 2012 oil discovery well was drilled. Based on this central segment only, RPS came up with 81 million barrels of (gross 2C) oil resources, which could be developed with a two-well programme. RPS confirmed a net present value for this segment alone of $401m (€392m), which is based on a $70 Brent oil price. At the current $100 Brent oil price, this would throw off a net present value of over $1bn.
LICENCE ISSUE
To keep the Providence show on the road, the chairman oversaw the raising of €1.8m two months ago at a miserable 1.5p a share – in the process causing yet more shareholder dilution damage. Menton, who had filled in as executive chairman, didn’t get around to appointing a new CEO until last month – a full nine months after Linn’s exit.

Phoenix 1
Has Goodman got his timing right in Providence?

THE MUSICAL chairs continue at Providence Resources, with the latest face popping up being beef baron Larry Good man, who now holds a 16.1% stake. His most recent buy-in was the 8.2% stake held by big UK investment group M&G, which clearly got tired of the procession of drilling and funding failures. It sold out the whole of its 80 million shares at 2c each, thus crystallising a 90% loss. What is clear is that the arrival of Goodman suggests that the wheels could finally be starting to turn at Providence and a huge jump in the price would immediately follow.

What is also clear is that while Goodman knows more about beef processing than most people on the planet, he knows very little about offshore oil and gas exploration. Then again, neither did Nick Furlong, who bought into Providence over a decade ago, relying on then chairman Pat Plunkett to provide guidance. Before the most recent development, the company managed to pour hundreds of millions of euro down the wells before hitting what looked like the real thing in the winter of 2011/12. The first drill that was put into the Barryroe field flowed at 4,000 barrels of oil a day equivalent.

On the back of this success, the then directors (Tony O’Reilly Jnr et al) raised €70m in April 2012 at €3.95 a share – over 10 times the current share price – but instead of focusing on the big 300 million barrel discovery only 50km offshore Cork in only 100m of water, they went to the Dunquin prospect in the 5,000m-deep South Porcupine, over 320km offshore Cork.

FUNDING
Here the boys managed to get Exxon to farm in and €200m was splashed out to find nothing but water. In a second attempt, another consortium was put together to waste €100m drilling another non-commercial well. Pat Plunkett then oversaw O’Reilly Jnr signing up to a €200m farm-out with Chinese intermediary Apec, which committed to fully fund a five-well drilling programme for a 50% stake, but this all came to nothing. When Plunkett subsequently moved at the start of 2019 to install new management,, he didn’t opt for a geologist with both in dustry experience and – ideally – knowledge of the Celtic Sea, such as Steve Boldy, CEO of Providence’s 20% partner in Barryroe, Lansdowne Oil and Gas. Boldy has a doctorate in geol ogy and spent 19 years working for the big US Amerada Hess group as its UK and international exploration manager and was vice-president for Ramco in Ireland, the company that developed the Seven Heads gas field that lies right at the top of Barryroe.
Instead, Plunkett chose Alan Linn, who had originally worked with big names such as Exxon and Cairn Energy. He was neither a geologist nor a geophysicist, but rather a chemical engineer. Linn then chose as a farm-in partner a small operation called Spot-On Energy, which claimed to have lots of connections to the Norwegian energy industry.