RR,
According to Blaise Dariustone, a reporter who is a correspondent at BBC News Afrique, 'The trial between Chad and Savannah Energy at the Paris Court of Commerce is scheduled for June 2025.'
FaceBook post on 8th March
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100004271854537
Well there is no 'Deal Signing Ceremony' in this years conference agenda PF - not that the last one did us any good! - so hopefully we get sign off before then. Assuming we get this over the line we could end up paying peanuts, if anything at all, for the acquisition which would be a good way to end the everlasting saga if that is what happens.
So here's a random theory. SAVE/Petronas have agreed they'll wait it out for as long as it takes to get signoff. Save provide the staff to run the operation (as contractors of Petronas) so Petronas don't waste resources on something they no longer want. In the meantime, SAVE complete further acquisitions which mean that the Petronas acquisition no longer classifies as a RTO and so we come back to market. When SS finally realise they are not going to win the stand-off they give agreement and Petronas pay us a nice amount of cash as the final account reconciliation.
No doubt that would have a few on here pulling their hair out ;-)
Unnd, good question. Here's a theory from Spizz Oil on ADVFN:
I believe the final paragraph is the one to focus on.
I simply cannot believe that this is being drawn out if the Company's BOD, its advisors and the regulators are not of the opinion that the deal will get over the line.
Full year results are normally posted on 8th June and as we have today been told, the PCNL financial statements for 2023 are also a pre requisite for the publication of the AIM admission document.
Last week we were told news would be forthcoming by 17th May. One week later and it's the end of Qtr 2 or beginning of Qtr 3.
For the regulators to agree to another extension, so shortly after the announcement of the last one, I believe is to accomodate the release of the two documents, with the PCNL financial statements following on from our FY 23 accounts.
It would not surprise me in the least if we receive notice of SS government approval before the publication of the two documents.
Further to the Company's announcement on 28 March 2024, the Company provides the following additional information on its proposed acquisition of PETRONAS International Corporation Limited's energy business in South Sudan through the acquisition of Petronas Carigali Nile Limited ("PCNL") (the "Proposed Transaction"), as first announced by the Company on 12 December 2022.
Completion of the Proposed Transaction remains subject to satisfaction of certain conditions precedent, principally the receipt of written approval for the Proposed Transaction from the Government of South Sudan. Following receipt of this approval, Savannah would then progress to finalise an AIM Admission Document to facilitate seeking a restoration to trading on AIM of the Company's ordinary shares.
Publication of the AIM Admission Document requires the release of the Company's FY 2023 audited annual results, together with the finalisation of the audit of the financial statements for FY 2023 of PCNL. It is currently anticipated, therefore, that the AIM Admission Document, together with Notice of General Meeting to approve completion of the Proposed Transaction pursuant to AIM Rule 14, would be published in late Q2 2024 /early Q3 2024.
Well I've never been one to follow the crowd so I'll be putting my phone to one side and taking the day off to enjoy a nice glass of malbec, with a few salted peanuts and a nice chicken balti. Looks like this might actually be approaching the home straight! Will be interesting to read the update next week.
Ha, yes, all good thanks RR. Busy decorating my son's new house (for free) so not got much idle time at the moment. Fingers crossed for something positive on SS in just over a week, but not got a clue how that one is going to turn out. Would be nice to get back trading again for sure.
There is nothing I can find in the public domain about the request from Savannah or the decision of the ICCI. The last thing we saw was Savannah winning an injunction to prevent the monies from the oil being used by COTCO. That injunction is under appeal but has not progressed since last September. Therefore, to me, this suggests Savannah were asking for those monies to be transferred to them pending the aribtration decision. Not that surprising then that the ICCI rejected this and so we would just be in the same position as previously where all monies are effect in limbo. Could be wrong but that's the logical conclusion from the currently known published documents.
Https://www.kapwing.com/65f0a60c5930677926614b1d/studio/editor/subtitles
Not sure if the link will work (it's a transalation of a Facebook video by the Chad Ministry of Hydrocarbons using kapwing)
Original post in French is here: https://www.facebook.com/MHETCHAD/videos/420477903994368/
Essentially it seems that Savannah requested the arbitration to allow Savannah to secure the oil revenues whilst the arbitration ruling is decided and the arbitration has denied the request.
For info, some observations from Thommie on ADVFN re Scotpak's post:
isnt another part of the problem that save isnt able to exchange the naira into dollars directly after getting paid due to an illiquid exchange market and thus is forced to hold big parts of the revenue in naira? So if thats still the case I expect another big fx loss in q1 as the received revenue in Naira will have lost most part of its value due to another big devaluation throughout this timeframe.
The reason they dont close the refinancing is the big devaluation of the Naira. Just imagine they close the refinancing in Naira now at an exchange rate of 1:1500. That would mean they roll over their current Dollar liability into a Naira liability on the terms of 1:1500. Their revenue is based on a fixed dollar gas price that is paid in the Naira exchange rate. So just imagine following scenario: save closes refinancing of the Dollar debt into a Naira debt now at an exchange rate of 1:1500. At 100$ debt as an example that would translate into a future debt of 150000 Naira. So we would need toll sell gas worth 100$ to pay the debt. If then in the following years the Naira gets much stronger and returns to sth like 1:750 we are getting paid only half of the Naira amount. So we would need to sell gas worth 200$ to pay down this naira debt. That means our real debt would double just on this. It would be very stupid to close such a deal now. On the other hand it would have been fantastic if save would have been able to do the refinancing a year ago when the Naira exchange rate was around 1:450? (I only guess). That would have meant, that they would only need 1/3 of time to pay it back as they are currently getting 3 times the amount of naira for their Dollar fixed contracts. Sadly that didnt happen. So in my opinion it would be the best not to do any refinancing now as long as we expect that the nigerian economy improves over the years to come and the exchange rate would then drop dramatically. Just let it be in dollars and pay it down, in the best case the earnings from a sucessful South Sudan deal will pay this dollar based debt down ... So to say a big failure of save mgmt not to refinance into a naira based debt before the big naira devaluation happened, as they planned to the do that since nearly 3 years? Refinancing now could just turn into an even bigger nightmare if there exchange rate drops inthe future and the naira getting strong er again...
With regard to SAVE, I wonder if said poster is still feeling the same way when he came back on here a while back to tell us 'So glad I disposed of 90% of my holding before suspension', before putting the money into I3E and PRD.
No one can foresee how things will always turn out but coming back to gloat is never a good move.
AK said the plan was for another acquisition in 2023. Assuming that SS is the reason for the delay in announcing this, it's more than reasonable to assume it would have have an effective date of early 2023 at the least. So there is definitely the possibility in my mind that we could announce the SS deal quickly followed by an SPA for another acquistion.
The sun is shining so feeling optimistic this morning :-)
You never know, Til :-)
https://www.sudanspost.com/world-bank-pledges-to-back-south-sudans-financial-reforms/