Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
I think management needs to shed their old Conoco/Shell/BG attitudes and start courting investors more actively. This includes announcing every single successful project and discovery e.g. Earn.
By keeping silent, it gives the impression that HBR has no plans to address their very short remaining reserves life and that's an immediate danger to any future valuation of the company!
Looks quite sizeable from the map shown here:
https://www.offshore-energy.biz/high-quality-gas-reservoir-discovered-in-southern-north-sea/
and Tolmount East clean up and testing is done.
High-quality gas reservoir discovered in southern North Sea
The company started full-scale exploratory drilling this July after deriving a “promising structure” and excavated to a final depth of 3,198 meters at the end of September, discovering gas in the target layer at the Earn prospect.
Following the discovery, Dana is carrying out evaluation drilling to accurately assess the amount of resources and to obtain additional data for future development.
The Earn prospect structure is located approximately 4 kilometers west of the company’s producing Tolmount Main prospect.
Well clean-up and testing of the Tolmount East development well has been completed including the installation of the Xmas tree and protection structure. The well is now suspended for future tie-in to the subsea infrastructure which will facilitate production via the Tolmount platform.
No RNS but Earn (50% share) is a successful discovery next to Tolmount! 133bcf?
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/539084/dana-confirms-find-at-southern-north-sea-exploration-well/
Latest rumour from Reuters:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/wintershall-dea-gets-takeover-interest-groups-including-totalenergies-2023-10-02/
Harbour Energy (HBR.L) is also interested in buying Wintershall Dea, but a transaction would likely be too large for the British oil and gas company, Handelsblatt said.
BASF and Harbour Energy declined to comment.
How is it possible for neo's after tax profit to be so much better than HBR's?
After tax, profits climbed from $455.9m in 2021 to $940.1m in the year to December 31, 2022, on revenues of $3.6bn – more than four-times that of 2021’s $878.9m.
https://www.energyvoice.com/oilandgas/north-sea/537842/neo-energy-2022-results-profits/
Not looking good:
https://www.fitchratings.com/research/corporate-finance/fitch-revises-harbour-energy-outlook-to-negative-affirms-at-bb-27-09-2023
Https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/23/scotland-wind-farm-accused-of-using-loophole/
that's where the govt need to act fast:
Moray East was originally awarded a contract for difference (Cfd) with a guaranteed but capped price of 57.50 per MWh in 2012 prices – about £74.49 in current prices.
However, the wind farm has exercised a power granted by the Government to postpone the start of the contract, meaning it has benefited from much higher market prices following the invasion of Ukraine.
The REF estimates that had Moray East implemented its CfD and delivered electricity at the contracted price it would have received £350 million, with the consumer receiving the difference of about £460 million.
At the same time, the wind farm has received payments for cutting its output at times when its electricity cannot be used locally or transmitted to other areas of the country because of grid congestion.
watched both videos & read the presentation:
- maybe it's just me but starting off by ****ging off premier oil is not a great start (their assets are the ones keeping hbr afloat currently + a future 240mmbbl 2c resource from zama, kan, timpan & tuna)
- ir's tone on m&a is not encouraging, if they think last year's prices were high, i'm not sure next year will be any different.
- sad to hear about the 400 layoffs but oil industry is booming now elsewhere, so all the best to those who were let go
- looking more in detail of the production comparison between 2023 & 2022, gba and buzzard numbers are really disappointing with a much higher than expected decline. with such a large decline rate on gba, why did they not consider jog's buchan+j2?
- seems to be a lot of hope on ccs. viking ccs is not the closest to the humberside and they rightly said 90% of the expected capex spent on ccs will be from the emitters.
- our best hope now for any price catalysts will be the layaran well results by end-2023!
Mainly due to tailwind, see lower part of RNS:
Profit before taxation for 1H 2023 was £298.3 million (1H 2022: £194.5 million) after taking into account a gain on acquisition of £139.6 million on the Tailwind transaction (1H 2022: £nil), a £1.5 million charge arising from an increase in the fair value of the BKR financial liability (1H 2022: £1.9 million), £7.0 million of finance revenue (1H 2023: £0.3 million) and £6.3 million of finance costs (1H 2022: £0.3 million).
The gain on acquisition represents the difference between provisional fair valuations of assets acquired and consideration paid or potentially payable calculated in accordance with applicable accounting standards. Such calculations are complex and involve a range of projections and assumptions related to future costs, production volumes, sales prices, discount rates and tax. The accounting for the acquisition of the transaction assets has been provisionally determined at this stage. The accounting standards provide for potential further adjustments to fair value assessments up to twelve months after completion of the acquisition.
I don't think there are any single article that can summarise it because there are alot of things yet to be decided but this is what I gather:
- first of all, all industries emitting more than 100k tonnes of co2 will need to pay the carbon tax currently but are given an allowance that will taper down to zero in the near future
- you can liken CCS to a reverse gas industry: the carbon captor dictates how much co2 will be supplied, the midstream pipeline/ship owners transports them to the upstream industry and this is where HBR's business (referred to in general as transport and storage company, T&SCo)
- currently it looks like this industry will be regulated very heavily especially if it's government funded so a fixed irr in the single digits might happen considering so much competition now
- the good news is that most of the development costs published (I'm guesstimating 70-90%) will fall on the captors and they are heavily reliant on government funding/subsidies but the downside means T&SCo can only start making money when co2 is ready to be supplied
- there is also a risk that HBR builds too quickly and the industrial clusters are not ready and basically your first injection gets delayed and your project npv gets ruined
- so far I have little worries about injectivity for HBR's assets yet
Not to downplay the success but please read this article:
https://www.energyvoice.com/renewables-energy-transition/526798/harbour-energy-ccs-windfall-tax/
On an investor call following the release of Harbour’s H1 results, Lind Cook said: “With the EPL, one of our complaints about it is that the allowance does not currently allow for it to include the CCS capex (capital expenditure).
I think there really is something weird going on.
I always thought the reason for HBR's price action is due to the low volume but then I compared the trade volume & value yesterday for BP (0.09% of marketcap) & TSCO (0.17% of marketcap) vs HBR (0.22% of marketcap).
When I looked at last month's data, HBR (8% of marketcap) is also alot higher than BP (2.3%) and TSCO (3.0%).
Good article Kokomo:
"Profits in the energy sector are volatile because wholesale prices are unpredictable. Companies cannot simply turn their investment projects on and off like a tap. These are long-term undertakings, which will simply not take place if the tax regime fluctuates unpredictably too. Yet this is the business environment that Britain now provides for the energy sector. It is the most irrational energy strategy in western Europe.
....
To some climate activists, this is only good news. And they have found a receptive audience in the Labour Party, which pledges to ban new oil and gas exploration licences. This a short-sighted posture born of populism rather than serious environmental thinking. "