Malcys blog7 May 2020 15:14
PetroTal has reported that the Northern pipeline has been shut down by the Peruvian Government for public health reasons to do with the COVID-19 virus, accordingly the company has shut-in the Bretana field due to storage capacity reasons. PetroTal are still deferring capex and reducing compensation to management and Directors and obviously the operating costs at the field are substantially reduced.
Due to the nature of timing of cash oil deliveries into the pipeline, for which settlement is received as much as 12 months later the recent crash in prices has led to a substantial, $42m liability usually settled when the balance exceeds $10m. The value of this is clearly a moveable feast, not just because as with the oil price in contango the prices 8-12 months out create a paper profit on recent sales.
Where do PetroTal go from here? Firstly as I see it there is a discussion going on as to how long the shut down is likely to last, there is no guidance in the statement other than it is a ‘temporary’ situation and that as an essential industry PTAL should be absolved and the pipeline re-opened soon. On this point I believe that given its importance to the country shareholders should have grounds for optimism.
The second point is to the guts of the deal that PTAL need to hammer out, I would expect that this is being done now and we can expect a deal soon rather than later. I come back to my earlier point about contango, this payment mechanism is a beneficiary of the current rack price for Brent and therefore the liability changes as to cash sales v final repayment price. Should the relationship between the company and PetroPeru remain good then I don’t see why a deal on two fronts can’t be hammered out, firstly obviously the effective derivative liability can be addressed and secondly opening the pipeline and possibly using the significant PetroPeru storage facilities to soften the bottlenecks. As I write the company shares are down 54%, which seems way too much of an overreaction and this opportunity may be one not to be missed.
https://www.malcysblog.com/2020/05/oil-price-ascent-petrotal-genel-iog-premier-gms/