Member Info for Madpunter

Mole - In 2015 the number of shares were 2.9bn at the start and 3.3bn at the end. This would give a buyout of £145 - 165m @ 5p and £29 -33m @ 1p, which would have been a 'steal' IMHO. However, a buyout may never have been on the cards. The shenanigans could have been just part of the plan to push FRR towards SH/O as the only source of money. Remember, SH/O have done nothing for FRR and only bought the LN's at auction for a fraction of their value. Also, it is more difficult to attract a buyer or investor after another has pulled out, namely Varang, as it sends negative signal. IMHO SH/O only wanted the shares when the possibility of them being worth a lot with a prospective deal became an option.

I missed 'so far' after the word 'unsuccessful' in my last post.

Dave73 - SH/O tried to take our shares from us on more than one occasion, while ZM and SN converted LN's at ten times the share price to be aligned with us. By the same analogy, if a burglar tries to break into your house to steal valuables you jointly own with others. When one of those 'others' is unsuccessful in trying to sell the valuables, you approach the burglar instead to try for a deal. That idea beggars belief, but there are 19 on here that think it's a good idea and have recommended your post.

Thanks for posting Oopsi. I'm on a warning of a permanent ban for posting political articles on FRR, hence the use of the previously posted Forbes article, to enable the Pompeo link.

Mentions lobbying by FRR directors and a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo from those lobbied.
Mike Pompeo is visiting The Republic of Georgia for two days on the 17th and 18th November

Part 3
$500,000 on Lobbying
The Houston Chronicle reported that Frontera spent $500,000 with the lobbying firm Cornerstone Government Affairs to push its case. The newspaper also reported that Frontera Chairman Steve Nicandros and other company executives have contributed more than $180,000 to federal campaigns, primarily to Texas and Oklahoma Republicans, citing the Center for Responsive Politics.

The issue was framed by members of the House and by Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, Texas Republicans, as a move against the United States, inspired by Russia and prosecuted by Georgia. In their May 15 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the senators, joined by Reps. Jodey Arrington (T-Texas) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), said, “We are specifically and increasingly concerned about Georgian ties to American hostile rivals and enemies, which are coming at the expense of geostrategic and business interests.” It goes on to insinuate high irregularities and anti-American actions.

This has outraged people in Georgia, including the American business community.

Lobbying by a small oil company shouldn’t derail 30 years of strategic, diplomatic, and economic cooperation between the United States and the most pro-Western country in the South Caucasus.

The Frontera saga continues.

Although there are inaccuracies in the article, it highlights the link between FRR and the politics of the Caucasus.

Part 2
The only oil that is being produced from the 1.25-million-acre leases is a paltry amount coming from Soviet-era wells, hardly enough to keep Frontera ticking over. This oil is recovered from just 1 percent of the lease territory.

U.S. Interest in Georgia
In 1997, the United States was interested in the Caucuses in general and Georgia in particular; and it still is. It sees Georgia as part of a bulwark, along with its neighbors Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, against the Russian regional influence. Georgia, which gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, was westward-oriented.

Although Georgia has since been through turbulent political upheavals, including the Rose Revolution in 2003 and Russia’s invasion and occupation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008, it remains firmly westward-oriented. It is negotiating to join the European Union and NATO; and since 2008, it hasn’t had an embassy in Moscow. The World Bank lists Georgia as the seventh-best country to do business.

When Frontera was formed the geopolitics and the technology fit. With the company’s political strength, it wasn’t hard to do a deal with Tbilisi, the Georgian capital. I’m told White had contacts there from his time at the Department of Energy.

Frontera has said that its failure was due to its geologists’ underestimating the difficulty of drilling and fracking the formations, and to encountering down-hole pressures it hadn’t expected. It also found it difficult to operate in a faraway country without much of a supply chain. The company has maintained that it is on a learning curve and that it will yet succeed.

Its Georgian workers went on strike in the winter of 2019, claiming that they hadn’t been paid in 11 months. They were finally paid by the Georgian state oil company.

In 2017, Georgia, saying that it had finally had enough, sought through international arbitration to reclaim its leases. The international arbitration tribunal found largely in favor of Georgia, but Frontera also claimed victory, I was told.

Tvalabeishvili told me that under the terms of the arbitration, contestant parties must mutually agree to the release of the text of the arbitrators’ decision. As yet, Georgia hasn’t received a consent from Frontera, so it is unable to release the full agreement.

Meanwhile, Georgia regards its contracts with Frontera as vacated but has delayed seizing the company’s leases in the face of political threats from Washington.

When the arbitration was handed down, the company demurred and applied maximum U.S. political pressure through an intensive lobbying effort, which had been pre-prepared by steady and substantial contributions to the Texas and Oklahoma congressional delegations, both by the company and its senior staff.

Sep 9, 2020,03:08pm EDT

The Politics Of Oil: What’s A Tiny Texas Company Doing With A Million Acres In The Country Of Georgia?

Llewellyn King

Despite the rush to get off carbon fuels, oil is still paramount and a disrupting force in international relations.
Currently, the Eastern Mediterranean is seething. There is a dispute between Israel and desperate Lebanon over offshore fields, and Turkey and Greece are at each other’s throats over deposits off Cyprus.

There is a dispute of another kind, in Georgia, located at the eastern end of the Black Sea on the southern flanks of the Greater Caucasus Mountains.

The Georgian government is at loggerheads with a Houston-based firm, Frontera Resources, and a small group of members of the U.S. Congress from Texas and Oklahoma has involved itself, siding with the company. The congressional pressure has been so great that the Georgians have partially backed off — even though in April, Georgia won its breach of contract suit filed against Frontera with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Netherlands.

The company appears to be something of a ghost operator, holding onto leases without finding any oil or acting as an upstanding corporate citizen.

This report is based on information from sources in Georgia familiar with the dispute as well as published information. My attempts to reach Frontera by email and phone in Houston failed: The telephone is answered by a recording. David Tvalabeishvili, Georgia’s deputy minister of economy and sustainable development, responded quickly and frankly to questions I emailed to him.
Frontera first appeared on the scene in 1997 when it hooked up with the Georgians. A small company with big hopes, it declared its intention to find and exploit natural gas and oil deposits in emerging markets, especially those opened after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. It seems to have settled on Moldova and Georgia, the latter its principal play.

The company was the creation of group of politically well-connected people in Houston, including Lloyd Bentsen, the former Treasury secretary and Texas senator, and organized by Bill White, formerly a deputy secretary of energy in the Clinton administration, who felt hydraulic fracking would release huge quantities of oil, gas and money when applied to proven reserves in those countries. White left Frontera in the early 2000s to join an investment firm and then went on to serve as mayor of Houston. I reached out to White by email but got no response.
In 2005, things looked good for Frontera, which got $80 million in an initial public stock offering and a listing on a subsection of the London Stock Exchange, the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). Today things look dismal, published reports concur. The company has been delisted, is in debt, and simply hasn’t been able to produce any new oil from proven reserves.

As information about where Block 12 is situated is not allowed to be posted here. The enemy amongst us reports the posts and they are removed and the poster's, myself included are threatened with permanent bans. Look in General chat, general chat.

But if that is the case, why is the extra money spent now and not before and why would more expensive lawyers take the case now and not before?

Convicts on death row are not usually spending their own money on appeals to delay the inevitable, so they have nothing to lose.

and counting.

https://timer-clock.com/countdown/october-31st/how-many-days-until-halloween

and counting.

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/halloween

ODR - The dilution might be negligible. If a deal was close for Block 12 and the figure for the deal was used as the valuation. Then if the prospective deal was for $15.7bn (figure used is to ease the maths), then each share would be worth $1 in the new company (15.7bn shares for the existing SH's + 35m shares for SH/O. If SH/O was given shares for the $35m loan notes, then he would get 35m shares (I know it would be less if the 35m is added to the 15.7bn, but it would still be 35m shares when rounded to the nearest million). This way SH/O wouldn't gain from the prospective deal, only getting what was owed. Frontera could also delay the certificates until the Californian case was over to ensure payment of some of the damages, should Frontera win (assuming the case continues).

and counting.

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/halloween

PJOHN - He doesn't say bigger, he says "more important." IMHO this is because with shares SH/O is now aligned with the BoD and the SH's, it doesn't suggest an increase in the value. IMHO Frontera has given equity for debt to FTI and if they don't accept it they will lose due to the four companies being struck off at the end of the month. As FRCC is a subsidiary to those struck off it will also no longer exist and also the associated debts. However, if the transfer of Block 12 is not ratified and FTI don't accept the shares, the only winner will be the GG. In other words, the GG may only accept the transfer of Block 12 if the case in NY becomes obsolete, due to the debt for equity swop being approved by FTI.

Ziggy - How can FTI have the asset returned to them. IMHO they would have to go through the courts in Georgia and they are out of time. If they don't accept the debt for equity swop, then any prospective deal for Block 12 is unlikely. Hence by the end of this month the parent company in the Caymans to FRCC (the company being liquidated by FTI) is being struck off the register and the subsidiaries will cease to exist.

Sorry it should read ...the company which holds the debts and is being liquidated...

As FTI have control of the FRCC, the company which holds the debts is being liquidated in the NY courts, then SH/O may not be able to reject the offer of equity for debt. Would FTI open themselves up to possible lawsuits by not accepting a swop of debt in FRCC for equity in FRUS, which results in a deal at full value of the debt owed. The clock is ticking and its not long to go.

https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/halloween

The value will be based upon what it is worth to FRUS, not the overall worth including the GG with their 51%.