Member Info for Love_You

Ha ha speedymeadie - what else has the UK government shafted apart from a lot of ladies aged 60-65. These people mugged-off the people in society who least deserved it. But really they should be standing up for themselves and if 20,000 gathered in London in yellow vests for a peaceful protest - and did it for a week (the French know how to strike/protest properly unlike the English) then it might have some effect - otherwise people will just moan and nothing will happen - which is what I expect to happen.

Or maybe it's wisest to stay short .... for me the Norweigens completed disrupted the North Sea market when they discovered the massive Johan van Sverdrup fields (Adler and Aldous, etc.). These fields are ten times the size of anything in UK waters and are consequently much lower cost per barrel to produce from. Hence Solan was really a double disaster because the money could have been far better invested taking a stake either in Hurricane's assets or in the development of Johan van Sverdrup. I know people think Solan wasn't necessarily the death of this company - but it was a double whammy and there is no room for complacency - one more stupid economically irrational decision from the PMO board and the company might well end up going into administration because that's what happens to companies run by people who can't behave rationally (in an economic sense).

I guess I've been feeling a little tetchy - off out now to enjoy some relaxation - good luck everyone if you own shares or are short (maybe you can get out of your shorts at a profit and then go long?).

Suresh786 - I remember you from interactive investor - you've been around a long time just like I have!

Personally I would say TD takes a risk everyday just by waking up - Solan was a far bigger risk than SeaLion objectively - but maybe TD and I perceive risk differently. Anyway it's impossible not to take risk in life .... you either risk being over-cautious and one day deeply regretting it and your wider impact on jobs and other people's lives - or you risk perhaps taking the wrong risks rather than the right ones! But even if someone just bought a large house and grew their own veg and didn't interact with anyone then there is a large risk that the lack of social interaction would not only make live significantly harder but would also shorten the person's life expectancy (or so I have read).

Anyway, if you compare the essential service that Centrica provides, the number of people it employs, the productive assets it owns, and its net debt to those of other companies one would have to conclude that Centrica is doing comparably to its peers .... so the share price does seem to be behaving in a sort of alternate reality to the fundamentals of the business.

Personally I think the government should compensate Centrica for the loss in value of our nuclear stake. It is the government that has made a complete mess of energy policy for the past 15 years. First they want new nuclear, then they don't, then they do. Then they want the old nuclear to be decommissioned, then they want it to keep going well beyond its originally intended lifespan, then they suddenly start to think about the safety implications of extending the lifespan of the old nuclear stations, then they start to worry that they need to keep the old nuclear open unless the grid couldn't cope currently. It's back forth, back forth, and nothing is actually planned or funded for the long-term! If the government had been clear about what it wanted from the energy sector then Centrica could have taken a stake in the new nuclear plants (well the one proposed for Anglesey might never go ahead it seems now) and could have either sold (a decade ago), or responsible decommissioned, the old plants.

So what about shareholders suing the government for compensation because of their shambolic energy policy?

Uddinkas, well noticed that sometimes market valuations rise when a company announces that it is worth less than previously known, and sometimes the market capitalisation falls when a company announces that it has more net assets than the market expected it would have.

But then ..... companies and investors have lots of different agendas .... some it is personal greed ....some of it is trying to follow government policy/regulations, some of it is trying to lose money on purpose to screw the people who have made up some stupid new regulations which the vast majority don't agree with, some of it is trying to raise the general level of economic growth (if personal interest is perceived to be served by this), and some of it is trying to slow down the general level of economic growth (if personal interest is perceived to be to shaft everyone else even if oneself takes a hit in the process also). It's extremely complex!

Re - could there be an administration if a CVA is attempted?

Why wouldn't 75% of landlords agree to the CVA proposals - who else is going to take over the leases and pay equal or more rent if Debenhams were to vacate those premises?

Shareholders would certainly back any proposals which resulted in Debenhams paying less rent and therefore being able to have a realistic chance of making profits in future (which is the aim of any business within a capitalist society).

Does that answer your two questions?

Hi ps200306,

Whenever there is money to be made the vultures come circling looking for a cut. The ownership structure seems to be getting quite complex and I don't have time to review it right now. However did PVR own 80% and then have to give 50% away to get the Chinese to collaborate with them on getting the oil out? Personally I'm surprised that BP or Shell weren't interested in the Barryoe oil. Also why doesn't Britain/Ireland have a National Oil company with its own fleet of drilling rigs/production vessels/FPSOs/and taking university graduates and school leaves directly from education and training them up.

It seems to be that either everyone is lying or no one is thinking straight about the personal benefits to themselves of greater cooperation. If global oil demand really is rising then producing and exporting this oil could really provide a massive boost to the Irish economy - yet the people who would also stand benefit from this, such as teachers, are teaching the children that oil and economic growth is bad - that we must all return to riding bicycles and growing potatoes by hand. Crazy times.

Oh yeah, sorry that I got the info you provided mixed up with that provided by Manyana - I sincerely thank you both for the comments you have both taken your time to make on this board.

Manyana you are right, I was working out my numbers without accounting for the fact that Providence don't own 100% of the oil in Barrryoe. Sloppy but I was getting excited by what the company could be worth is the oil was valued on a metric per barrel equivalent to that used for the North Sea.

I think the issues about selling the company goes to what investors expect from the future. Growth since 2008 has been far cleaner and far slower than previously in the history of the global economy - the service sector just doesn't require the amount of fuel that the construction sector requires, and the result of central bank policies (whether intended or not) has been a massive slowdown in the construction sector. Also what construction has occurred has been done using more efficient methods and been done by the rich with an abundant supply of labour, which has kept wages really low - hence any profits within this sector have not really rippled out into the wider economy and the multiplier effect on economic activity has been extremely low. So my point is that there are a lot of issues around the demand for oil going forwards - as the economic trends are definitely towards lower fuel consumption. Hence it's quite risky to hold out for the chance that Avalon may come good - remember the "poor and middle class" have been hit by austerity for the past decade, and the richer people have focused on technology and services. The trend is towards smaller houses/apartments, and getting people to cycle/walk to work in some office/coffee shop - they're paid just enough for food, to watch Netflix, and have one/two holidays per year (if they don't waste their money on booze/fags). That's a very efficient system of employment which uses very little fuel/oil. So yes, Avalon is exciting as any prospect potentially containing billions of barrels would be. However, if the future demand isn't there to the extent of past demand for oil then in a market-driven economy the oil price may not lend itself to a particularly high valuation even if Avalon became a resource rather than just a prospect.

I do think investors need to be careful they don't just hold out for higher and higher prices for oil in the ground. That only encourages the economy to switch away from using petrol/oil at an increasing rate (because technology makes greater efficiencies possible each year). Hence I'm hoping that people can agree a fair price and actually get moving on producing the oil before it is too late and a future arrives in which there is no demand within the wider economy for the oil from offshore Ireland.

Hesus, I post too much. Sorry Manyana for my ramblings. Anyway, why do you describe thinking of Providence shares as lottery tickets? Surely if the oil flows from a shallow field close to the shore then it is guaranteed to be profitable - isn't it? And the risk factor of getting the oil developed - well the Chinese have agreed to take care of that? But political risk/dilution?

Mrd5432, personally I feel that sanctioning Solan wasn't a sensible level of risk/reward economically. The following year they acquired SeaLion and although that had political risk, the economic risk of going ahead with SeaLion is only 5% of the economic risk of Solan. I feel Premier were weak when they should have been brave - they should have said to themselves we have 600 million plus barrels in the North Falklands - let's just forget about Solan which only has 45 million barrels and let's be brave politically and push ahead with SeaLion. The thing about being brave politically is that it nearly always works out well in my opinion - politicians just dislike any change in general - hence they dislike new projects happening - but equally once it is built and working they don't generally have a problem with what was done - because taking someone to task for past decisions which actually made a lot of people a lot of money is called "rocking the boat" and as I said politicians "as a species" have a default mode known as "do nothing", "do nothing", "doing nothing is always best as then I can just collect my £75,000 per year and pension without any worries". They wouldn't have decided to be politicians unless they were extremely timid people who disliked doing anything unless about 90% of people agreed with them. The brave people are CEOs and entrepreneurs who often take the view that other people don't actually know what they want until they are presented with it already done (which is often largely true I feel personally).

Thanks very much BaysilHope. That was extremely useful!

Also I sometimes wonder why PremierOil got in such a mess in the first place when really producing oil from places with established infrastructure (such as the North Sea) should be a piece of cake compared to setting up deepwater fields for the first time offshore countries with little history of oil production (for example Ghana and Senegal). But that would only lead me back to questioning why on Earth Solan was ever sanctioned. You don't know the answer to why Solan was sanctioned do you - it always seemed extremely financially risky to agree to spend so much on a small field in the harsh environment West of Shetland.

Hence I was wondering how the team responsible for this financial disaster would have reached their original decision to sanction the Solan development?

Also LLucan, you have to factor in "trust". If a company does not pay a supplier then another supplier is far less likely to supply them (because they will assume there is a good chance they won't be paid, just the same as the previous supplier wasn't paid).

Fate, but once the lenders directly own the subsidiaries then the supply chain will have not "self-interested plc" between them and the banks. Now we all know how the banks behave (as self-interested companies themselves). Hence without a "firewall" which was the plc Interserve then there really is no protection for the supply chain - the banks will be free to treat them however the banks want. If I was a supplier in this situation I would probably try and get paid what I was owed and then cease supplying anymore goods on credit - because from the ways the banks have behaved in the past there really is good reason to suspect they will not treat the people they deal with ethically.

How can the banks justify not rolling over the debt when Central Bankers has injected $4 Trillion dollars since 2008 and have left rates at 0.5% in the UK (supposedly to encourage lending by the banks). Is everything the public is told a lie? Central Bankers have been banging on about the need for companies to borrow to invest to prevent the general economy from going down the toilet. So how can the banks now be refusing to lend when interest rates are still set at a level (0.5%) which is meant to encourage banks to lend more. If Central Banks really wanted banks to start to cut back on their lending then why wouldn't they raise interest rates (up to 6% or so which is normally the sign that banks need to cut back on lending - because lending at 6% ultimately provides too great a return to the lender and sends the borrower bust, hence why banks would start to cut back lending once interest rates start to rise).

Do women like men who lose money?

Does Amjad have a wife or a girlfriend?

If so he better pull his finger out of the wrong pipework and actually do some work towards making Kraken value accretive to Enquest's shareholders.

I don't care that my posts are too long - I'm starting to find out that there are actually some real humans on here and not just bots following 'small-picture' rules (and yes I agree that my posts are too long). Also humour is a good idea sometimes, like now, so if Amjad Bseisu really has £50 million invested in Enquest shares then he better have invented a really big hoover that can suck up oil much faster than muck. Yeah....humour never been a strong point .... still I believe this would come under the variety known as surrealistic humour.

Why should no payout allow investors to focus on the oil reserves and revenues?

If I was an investor in Cairn, and the Indian tax department had just robbed me (or rather Cairn) of $1.4 billion, then I would be very worried about what this implied for the future of my life - if you are complicit in a break down of law and order then really you can't complain if something similar is done to you personally in the future.

Think about it !!

The finance costs are an issue - every year they are in the hundreds of millions - this is clearly ridiculous for a company of Premier's size - whoever is benefitting from these payments is doing what's known colloquially as "taking the piss."

So basically Premier could be a good investment if the vultures weren't eating the bird alive which lays them the golden eggs - and hence they are in danger of killing the bird sadly through their greed and of receiving no more golden eggs.

Another problem is that Tony Durrant is a complete muppet saying publicly that there could be benefits to Premier of doing deals in the North Sea. So far nothing Premier has done since 2012 has had a medium to long-term benefit on the share price. Hence his comments are misleading the sellers into perhaps thinking that Premier can afford to pay top dollar for any acquisitions in the North Sea. The reality is that Premier is in dire financial straits, has been since 2015, and can't afford to pay much at all - however, due to Premier's tax credits, some kind of asset swap would make sense. If Chevron could give Premier 25,000 bopd plus 100 million barrels of reserves in the North Sea then they could take a 70% stake in Zama in return which is a low-cost enormous field in the Gulf of Mexico (hence it would be under their noses, to keep an eye on things, from their base in Texas). Something like the above asset swap would make sense surely - but for Premier to pay out cash for more assets is simply insane when all their problems have stemmed from the fact they should have sold a few assets when oil prices were high from 2010-2014 - they certainly can't afford to go on a shopping spree now when there is little evidence (based on their history) that they can discern what is a value accretive business from what is a value destructive business!! If I was Tony I would say nothing to the media and try and find a way to make use of the UK tax credits without forking out any more cash - the problem is that they have always been spend, spend, spend when now it is time to focus on paying down their existing debt.

Is $13 dollars per barrel of 2P reserves in shallow water, close to the shore, a fair price? Or is Ireland too unpredictable in terms of taxation to entice people to develop this field?