Member Info for KeithOz

Faminee - lol, not a Freudian slip, just autocorrect. You knew I meant farminee.

* 50m reservoir, positive for gas, sidewall cores (I think) to be taken.

* Thick salt top seal - very good.

* Fairly low level of helium, likely not commercial.

* Farm out to follow, with faminee helping to pay for 3D seismic to better evaluate the depth and positioning of high-quality reservoir for future drilling.

Https://www.barlamane.com/fr/les-britanniques-sound-energy-et-predator-oil-gas-envisagent-une-cotation-a-la-bourse-de-casablanca/

I suspect this is just Paul making threats.

Less stuff on the pad maybe because casing has gone in and cement used up.

Anyone know what is being used to perforate & test MOU-3? Would normally just be winch/wireline, but Paul emphasized the development of a safety case, even so, using the current rig would be something of overkill.

A quick couple of points:

* 'Overpressure' simply means more pressure than would be normal for that depth. You can have shallow overpressured gas - although obviously deep overpressured gas will be at a much higher pressure.

* I am not aware that a pressure reading was taken at the bottom of MOU-4, so we don't know what sort of pressure the reservoirs are under. Carbonates with secondary porosity development can be tricky to predict. However, pressure readings in MOU-3 were o/p at top & bottom - they didn't get a reading from the middle sands.

* ONHYM are very careful about the use of the word 'discovery' due to some dodgy history, but did allow CHAR to refer to OBI-1 as a discovery in their RNS, despite only a log result, no flow test (and I don't think any pressure readings either). Maybe they will, maybe they won't.

* We may get a brief RNS on Monday (Code 1 at 14.39 on Friday). Personally, I was hoping for a few more days - as has been said here, the longer it takes, the bigger the discovery. If the RNS is positive - to be fair still inly an assumption at this stage - I suspect the full details will emerge at the same time as the announcement of a deal - possibly 2nd week of April. Companies A,B,C & E will all want to go over the numbers and will have to be negotiated with.

6 am, off to run up a local mountain.

No cr@p today, the trolls have gone away

The share price is reborn, a symbol of the dawn

No trolls today, it seems a common sight

But people passing by don't know the reason why

How could they know just what this message means?

The end of their hopes, the end of all their dreams.

Code 1 at 14.39. Have a great weekend, Predators.

2 more comments on this morning's posts.

* I don't know why there is a difference between the two MOU-5 costs quoted by Paul, but it is not due to the deviated drill. The need for siting the pad 277m from the optimal location (as Androcles says, for environmental reasons) was known months ago, way before either of the two cost statements being discussed today.

* I know a little about the Samir refinery. It was indeed a very 'open' design, allowing it to process high-sulphur local heavy oil as well as (imported?) lighter & sweeter crude. However, it has been closed for 10 years and will doubtless require complete refurbishment, a lengthy and expensive business. There is now no local expertise to do that, nor run it once completed. Most importantly, there is no infrastructure linking it with Guercif, meaning any oil would need to be trucked - very inefficient & expensive.

Oil may be a plus for a buyer with deep pockets, but imo the only value to PRD is that it could be an additional sweetener on the sale price.

Perhaps I should comment on my original post on this subject, since it was almost three 3 years ago. I agree that oil is likely somewhere on the Guercif licences, but whether that will be the case in the relatively shallow Triassic underlying the Jurassic is more questionable. Paul was originally of the opinion that Titanosaurus (before it was named that) could be an oil prospect, but has since changed his view. Source rock studies early last year - not taken into account in the January ITR - suggest gas-prone rocks directly underlying the Jurassic carbonates.

Seabright is imo correct that oil-prone source rocks are to be found at depth, and that the tectonic dynamics that have formed the Guercif graben will have meant that they could have been cooked to the extent of producing gas. Guercif has a very high geothermal gradient caused by the nearby remnants of the CAMP (Central Atlantic Magmatic Province), so the oil doesn't need to be as deep as normal to cause phase separation - production of gas. My question is - has the temperature been so high as to degrade much of the remaining oil? Hopefully not, since we know from extensive seeps and actual production in 1924/5 that at least some oil does still exist.

What will be found in MOU-5 - gas at the top, maybe some condensates at the bottom? Will they drill further into the Triassic? - I hope so, but I hoped so for MOU-4 as well, however the Triassic does appear to have a better developed trapping structure at MOU-5 than it did at MOU-4, so here's hoping they will this time.

It is of interest that on Slide 14 of the 29th January 2025 presentation, directly under the Titanosaurus structure is a white star labelled 'Deeper Triassic potential?'

Really? nor Cathal Friel? Not on 7th September last? In Holt?

Bold, for disclosure, when was the last time you spoke to or met TW personally?

@F&M and MrNinja. You may wish to read these two articles to understand the background as to why Paul is so bitter. He rolled his own company Pathfinder into Fastnet, then basically lost everything, including his discovery at Tendrara, when he was diluted out of existence when Cathal Friel and friends decided to put the O & G assets into a shell and raise substantial funds to reverse the rest of the company into pharmaceuticals.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/energy-and-resources/fastnet-buys-firm-with-moroccan-stake-1.538447

https://www.share-talk.com/moving-out-of-the-slowly-declining-oil-sector-and-into-fast-growing-biopharma-sector/

You may be aware that there is a tight-knit cabal of influential Irish businessmen whose interests include both O & G and pharma, all sitting on each other's boards. Barryroe is now in the hands of this group. In the 90's I had professional dealings with two of these folks, starting as an attempt to acquire a substantial asset and growing into a potentially more comprehensive cooperation. These people had the gift of the gab, were very smart, well-connected politically and exceptionally well financed. Unfortunately, their actions were the opposite of their very positive words, and things did not end well. Paul has my full sympathies.

Weird, all the capital letters turned into lc, and Sh@re Pr0phets turned into asterisks.

here's another interesting (to me) observation, that may ruffle some feathers, but what the hell, i'm 16,000 km away. some folks associated with predator have worked with paul for decades. i'm thinking of carl kindinger (island, pathfinder, fastnet) steven staley (fastnet) and jerry keen (broker to the above when at davy / fox-davies / oak).

when fastnet decided to become amryt pharmaceuticals, chairman cathal friel unceremoniously dumped offshore ireland licences, the moroccan licences, and along with them our very own paul griffiths. i'm pretty sure they did not remain friends. paul then picked up the licences and spent his own money on them before founding predator. these licences are now on the cusp of becoming very valuable property, and envious eyes are being cast in their direction, to be sure, to be sure.

so what happened to cathal friel? he continued being a serial entrepreneur, and having recently sold several of his interests, is a very rich man. he is also best mates with tom winnifrith, who has helped promote his companies. friel has also regularly appeared on tw's podcasts and presented at ************* functions, including the recent one at holt.

i'm sure it's all coincidence.

The NewMed Morocco article posted today has prompted me to revisit this topic. Several of the usual suspects have recently posted here, mocking the predictions of corporate activity made some time ago that have yet to happen. Some recent history might help explain things.

I posted this on X (then still Twitter) on October 2nd 2023: https://x.com/KQuick20704342/status/1708790834924261603/photo/1

It shows Leila Benali, Morocco Energy Minister, and Amina Benkhadra, head of ONHYM, meeting with Yossi Abu & Yariv Elbaz of NewMed Energy. At that meeting, NewMed licensed the southern Atlantic Margin licences - I have no idea why it has just been published on Yabiladi as if it is news. At the time, BP & ADNOC (Abu Dhabi National Oil Corporation), were jointly offering $2Bn for 50% of NewMed. At te same time, there was widespread speculation within the industry, from certain UK-based resources analysts, and in Morocco, that NewMed were proposing to spend the incoming money on acquiring the PRD Moroccan assets. NewMed were very keen to diversify away from the high-tax regime of Israel into more profitable areas. All this was discussed on this bulletin board in 2023.

Just five days after my X post, Hamas raided Israel. The Israeli response, rightly or wrongly, made any further deals between an Israeli company and an Islamic nation politically unacceptable, and BP/ADNOC also withdrew from the NewMed deal, citing questions over the value of the bid.

Both BP and ADNOC were clearly aware of PRD's assets. PRD engaged new broker Fox-Davies (or more correctly, F-D approached PRD) - notably, F-D had offices in London & Abu Dhabi. The serial delays during 2024 put the external interests on the back burner, but I have strong suspicions that these companies are still viable partners. Add Exxon-Mobil to the mix, they now have interests in Morocco (the northern Atlantic Margin licences) and cannot be unaware of the potential profitable onshore business.

Once (and of course if) commercial quantities of gas are proven, there will be no shortage of interested parties.

Champs - that article is very out of date. NewMed acquired the southern part of the Atlantic Margin a couple of years ago - ExxonMobil have the northern part.

https://hydrocarbons.onhym.com/en/exploration-acreage-map

@BRV & Rob - thanks for your replies. At the time of the January presentation, it did seem that Paul was favouring conventional perforation, but that a final decision had not been made at that time. He did however recently make it clear that MOU-3 shallow perforation was the priority and 'dependant upon MOU-5 results', it would happen very soon after. To me this implied that whatever method was to be used would be determined very quickly, and that the approval and import process would be underway asap - presumably by end January in order to do perforation by end March.

The issue I was raising today is that if you are going to use the same method for both wells, it would save time, money and hassle to arrange for the equipment and teams to do the two wells back to back. From the last interview (the white hard hat) it would seem that everything was lined up to do MOU-3 in late March - if so, why not both wells?

Some discussion on when testing of MOU-5 would occur, in a success case. We know that MOU-3 shallow section is to be perforated and flow tested imminently. We know that Sandjet can perforate the two layers of casing. If Sandjet gear & crew are already in country for MOU-3, it would make sense to do MOU-5 at the same time. However, we don't know for sure if Sandjet will be used for MOU-3. Can conventional explosive perforation be used for both? This from Dan Gibson, retired Completions Engineer:

"Perforating two strings of pipe is often the only way to access pay behind the outer casing. But the perforations behind the outer pipe will be much smaller and poorer quality than normal. Have your perforating supplier run the prediction models for the guns you plan to use. Be sure to take into account the lack of centralization for both the guns and the casing. In my experience, with thru-tubing guns, this has resulted in much fewer effective perfs than you would 'guess' and only the low side perfs really contribute (ie effective 1-2 spf with small entry holes). But as this is often the only way to access these reserves, without a workover, then that is still an effective technique. If the zone is potentially valuable, then consider two perforation runs and/or a proper workover."

So whatever technique is being used, it would appear that it could be used for both boreholes. If conventional route, I don't know if different size guns would be needed and how long it would take to import sufficient to cover both holes. If Sandjet for both, then presumably just additional hi-spec sand is needed.

Whichever, it would save time & money to do both sequentially. Yes, there is enough cash floating around.

As an afterthought, some might like to research the Hugoton gas field in Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas. I am not suggesting Titanosaurus is the same size or has the same helium concentration (although that would be very nice), but the geology is analogous.

Part 2.

I have recently read the translations of two rather obscure technical papers by Moroccan geoscientists – please note I have been unable to obtain the full text of the first, only the abstract.

Azzab et al, Journal of African Earth Sciences, 2019, Vol 150, pp 584-594, and

Boufkri et al, 1st International Electronic Conference on Minerals Science, 2020.

They refer to a number of small outcrops of granitic rocks near Guercif that I mentioned above – I have corrected the translated names in the papers to accord with Google Maps so that you can locate these yourselves. They include Debdou, Narguechoum, Mhirija / Lamrija, Alouana and Tancherfi. I have been unable to locate Mekkam. They also mention other locations further away across northern Morocco & Algeria. By using sneaky gravimetric and aeromagnetic survey methods, they have determined that these granitic intrusions are very much larger in extent than the small outcrops might suggest - in Azzab et al: “the buried granitic massifs extend over about 30 Km to the NNE” and “The SSW massif has a thickness of about 11 Km, while the NNE one is about 8 Km”. These extensive intrusions could also account for the very high geothermal gradient seen around Guercif.

I would caution that the maps in the Boufkri paper (I have put an example on X: https://x.com/KQuick20704342/status/1899250088582738385/photo/1 )

show anomalies that relate to a number of possible causes, not all of them are potentially helium-generating granitic intrusions or volcaniclastic sediment deposits – you need to read the bottom paragraph of page 4 and relate it to the map at top of p.5. Also, this paper has not been peer-reviewed.

In summary, there seem to be indications that there are deep-seated structures that could generate helium over a much wider area than I previously expected. Emphasis on 'COULD'. As usual, this is not in any way investment advice, just sharing my interpretation of published data which I have researched for my own interest, it does not prove the presence of helium. We will only know when MOU-5 results are in, and the gas subjected to this diagnostic test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-vTvFrS2s8.

Part 1.

Good morning, Predators. Some may have noticed that I have not been overly enthusiastic about the potential for helium in the Guercif region, and was not too impressed by the generic 'specialist report' that was commissioned by PRD. This was compounded by the information that the actual concentration of helium in the deep MOU-3 sample had not been determined. I have recently found some new (to me) information that has made me more positive.

Why was I dubious? I will try to explain without my spell checker blowing a fuse. Helium is generated by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium, so it is necessary that source rocks have U & Th-containing minerals. These are typically found in three main structures:

*Granite intrusions/plutons, blobs of the mantle which have risen towards the surface, usually found in clusters derived from a very deep batholith, as in Devon & Cornwall. There are granite intrusions to the south & east of Guercif, but I considered these too small & too far away to be a source of commercial quantities of helium.

*Basements – which are deep rocks that have been recrystallised by heat and pressure, and have been overprinted with new minerals by hot fluids from the mantle below. The basement under Guercif is unusually close to the surface, but is a result of the Hercynian (aka Variscan) orogenic period, which unlike other mountain-building events, is generally not associated with producing widespread granitic material, hence imo unlikely to contain much U & Th.

*Sedimentary layers derived from erosion of either of the above, and deposited elsewhere. There are suitable volcaniclastic deposits directly beneath MOU-3, and I suspected these to be the source of the detected helium. They have been washed in from the south & east. Unfortunately, these are relatively recent and localised deposits, so would not underlie the Jurassic.