Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
frarfa, I was wondering the same thing, till I found this textbook stuff on oil farmouts
https://scholar.smu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2690&context=smulr
A quick browse through the hundreds of pages showed me there are so many things to be negotiated, like what type of farmout (there are loads) , what form is the payout (acreage, profit) etc and when will payout start, what happens if a duster is hit etc etc etc. Very complex. I can see why it's taking a while.
Basically, there are no fixed rules in a farmout, and every little 'what if' has to be considered when you're looking for a needle in a haystack, and when' anything that can go wrong usually does' (common oil and gas saying).
I say the long delay may be a good thing as it might mean they are really negotiating something rather than sipping a few Bundies and Coke on the verandah.
They beter hurry up though. 4 years with positive seismic and successful core samples , 3 holes, no oil yet, but lots of 'exciting' then inversely 'disappointing' news constantly. No wonder investors are getting antsy...
Bothwell, are you still counting in days. You need calendars for the last 4 years to see how long we've been averaging down (bar the odd spike on RNS ever-hopeful and glorious news .
More acres, more oil , seismically confirmed reserves on one hand, should see the price go higher logically.
But the slowness (4 years near as dammit, since we first put drill to ground in IW) and lack of getting even a single barrel out from all those billions we allegedly have, is creating a sense of failure, in me at least... We have only tried 3 holes in 4 years, and not one has been fruitful, despite the glowing RNS's telling us about sweet spots, multiple pay zones, huge potential etc etc.
Its too damn slow, we keep giving cash via more shares being issued, which 88e then use to buy and drill crappy old plays that nobody else wanted, ( probably 'cos they turn out to be dusters ).
I can't understand the logic of paying for the road, the rig etc and then not put it on the IW Conventional. Why waste the time and money on a piddly play(Winx) that might just have a slight chance of touching into a hitherto unknown extension of a known play .
Its like we are the ones going through the garbage right now, looking for leftover scraps outside other people's shops, while we apparently have our own (IW conventional) supermarket stacked to the brim that we don't want to disturb (makes me nervous, why don't we drill the big 'un first if we know there's oil in it) .
I'm no oil man, but I am an engineer, and can't see any logic to our actions so far. A vertical drill in IW... why, when the plan was originally a proper horiz frac (wouldn't have cost much more, as compared to having to go back and do the horiz one again anyway). The time and money wasted to put a drill into Winx, when IW conventional is waiting to be proven.
I haven't been reading up on 88 any more, as 4 years of BS RNS's have tired me out on this one, so I'm sure someone will tell me why our actions so far are sound logic, without simply quoting the 'facts' and figures from the presentations or RNS's. These glowing numbers don't seem to bear any relationship to what we can actually achieve.
I only hope we get a huge hit on IW Conv, hopefully with a FO partner. I will then have belief again, but right now, I am clinging on because being in a SP coma isn't the same as being dead (although we are deteriorating rapidly), so might as well hope for the best.
I feel your pain Aussie, same boat mate. Trouble is the language used which fuels hopeful sentiment in the average human, e.g. from pre drill RNS, 'Winx-1 has a best estimate unrisked prospective resource of 400 million barrels'. ' Unrisked' and 'prospective' are both fairly positive terms and sound like decent odds, but now we have dust & the average human is going to say ' So you ''knew'' there was 400m barrels in Winx, yet not a drop came out, so what about the 2800m barrels you 'know ' about in IW ? '
'Who is making these estimates and how accurate are they ? Is IW also just dust disguised as oil ? '
And I think thats why everyone is so grumpy right now. We get told there's sh*&loads of oil, seismics have 'proved' it, language is flowery and full of anticipation, 3rd party surveys have apparently confirmed it, yet we still can't hit a roo in the ar*e with a digeridoo & can't get it out.
MaybeRNS's should be more like this (my own version)
'G'day investors. IW acreage has shown some good signs on seismic, and if these shows are in fact viable oil, then there's a load of it ( we guess 2800m bbls). We will have a go at drilling a hole into the best spot we can find, and maybe have a 1 in 20 or worse shot of hitting oil. If we do, happy days, if not, we will have another go in a different spot. We hope our investors realise that trying to hit a target 2 miles down, in the freezing cold, that we have identified using a stick of dynamite and a tape recorder, with a 3 inch wide bit of pipe is bl**dy difficult and we may cock it up and miss, so bear with us, we'll get there eventually.'
here's hoping the prospective FO'ee knows something from the data that gives them much better odds at extraction. Our track record is not good so far, 0 for 3 on apparent 'sweetspots'.
ET.., we have to laugh, else we'd be crying. Glad to lighten the mood. It's only money ....onwards to glory !! By the time we've finished drilling all our holes, the top bit of Alaska might tear away like a postage stamp !!
Thanks Reaper. Appreciated. It's the nasty replies that will invariably say obvious things like ' well, you play on AIM, what do you expect' etc etc I am hoping to avoid. It's just venting therapy, and any supportive replies from like minded people are welcome of course.
Our time will surely come. Law of averages. Been waiting 5 years l....another 5 can't hurt if it gets us 50p +
The trouble with Dusty Well's RNSs just before a drill is that they are fillled with emotive terms like ' multiple potential pay zones identified', ' 2D seismic has identified large conventional leads at Project Icewine' etc etc. He makes it sound like we have actually found oil (what does 'identified' mean if not ?)......until we stick a pipe in.
So the effect of any 'positive' RNSs on SP in future , I feel, is going to be less and less due to the Cry Wolf effect.
Just too many disappointments following hope-building RNSs. Soon, nobody will believe anything in the RNSs and the only RNS that will shift the price will have to be headed 'OIL AT LAST !!!' . Lets face it we've had 3 1/2 years since Icewine 1 drilled and not a single drop, despite RNSs & seismics saying 'sweet spot' , 'billions of barrels' etc etc.... 3 &1/2 years FFS !!!, and many of us have been in much longer !!!
My faith is being seriously tested here (I am a LTH). If I could just break even I'd be happy ..., but this has only gone down down down on the whole, so now just hoping for that lucky break. But it's looking more like a lottery now, with about as much chance of winning too.
We can't seem to hit a 'roo in the ar*e with a digeridoo . The only upside is that the more dusters we hit, the greater the odds we will hit oil 'next time' given that successful drills are, what, a 1 in 20 chance ?
Sorry for the whinge , but I am getting rather despondent and beginning to doubt the competency of our team/ accuracy of our data. I'm sure I'm not alone. P'd off I've wasted 4 years looking and I could have bought in today at 1/3 of the price. Now I just can't help but feel the next drill will be the same, but hoping nonetheless...
Topped up a bit anyway as at least I can get my average down while I wait for the oily needle in the haystack to appear
I feel better now and will continue being a LTH (no choice now). No need for replies, I'm sure there'll be some smart comments.
Such a therapeutic BB :-)
cd66b ..On dilution vs consolidation, the point is it's not linear. Once more shares are released, the price is affected more by sentiment etc and is not usually subjected to the same ratios as shares before vs after . Thus £5K does not necessarliy buy you the same %age share, as it would in a purely mathematical sense.
if I bought 5 years ago , £5K's worth at 2p, I would have 250000 shares now and then when there were 4bill in circ, thats 0.00625% of the total then, and they'd only be worth £2500 and 0.005% of the total shares now, but if I bought at today's price I would get close to 500000 for £5K out of 5billion = 0.01%, almost double the percentage and worth £5000 today. Hence £5000 does not get you the same %age of the company, because more shares issued for the same mcap means the price dilutes inevitably. When the price goes up the guy who buys £5000 worth at the lower price scores more £££ (share of the spoils) when he sells than the guy who spent the same £5K when the price was higher.
Maccers, it's called dilution. Every time more shares are issued, the price goes down, as each share is now a smaller piece of the whole company.
If you bought 1 mill shares when there were say 2 billion in circ, you would need 2.5 million now that there are 5 billion, to keep your share the same. Also, if you paid 2p for them then, you get a double whammy, because you only got half as many as you can get now, so you suffer on the value of your pot halving and on the number of shares you own being half of what you could have bought had you waited til the dilution was complete.
the pizza is the same size, but if you want more slices to sell to raise cash, then everyone's slice gets smaller & thus worth less. 88e needs cash so makes more slices to sell, hoping that sentiment and news will mean each slice doesn't go as low as it should if it were on a straight linear dilution...
The trick is to buy more slices when they're cheap to keep your %age of the pie the same and bring your average cost down (if only I had cash to do so :-(
Pikka is 15 miles northish of us. We will be on the southern tip of what is/was thought to be the extent of the nanushuk play
map here
https://www.google.com/search?q=pikka-b+well+resource+estimate&client=firefox-b&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=YflYqTBt-rfyiM%253A%252Cfu2PRx5IYNeONM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kSqqwAMsqQ9-AoEP7V5YLpyumR4DA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjswbOquPTfAhWfRxUIHcQCAyUQ9QEwAXoECAUQBA#imgrc=YflYqTBt-rfyiM:
OMG. No, I was not aware of this, and hence my joke was in bad taste. I apologise to all I have offended. I was at his last presenation and he seemed in excellent health. That is a big loss for the team, I'm sure. I have been in a lull on this, tired of watching and waitingfor over 2 years, and haven't been keeping up to date during the long wait. What did he die of ?
I have been in this for a few years now and am still holding , but am human and allowed to vent some frustration. Apologies again if it was in bad taste. Completely unintentional, I assure you. I'm not that callous...
'Interpreted as' means just that. they reckon its all stimulation fluid coming out, not any salt water or liquids etc from the reservoir itself. The total fluid recovered is 24% or so of what was shoved in in the the first place., and that fluid is pretty much 100% only frac fluid
What worries me is that all the holes they made are contributing to the flow back of fluid, but none seems to have hit any meaningful part of the great lake of oil that's supposed to be down there.
I still say they c*cked up going for the cheap vertical drill. Why try to get your needle tip into the middle of a sheet of cardboard from the flat side, when you're almost guaranteed to be somewhere in the cardboard by going in sideways from an edge (especially when you're 11000ft deep and trying to get your pipe end exactly in the middle of an 80ft vein) ? It like having a 0.2% accuracy window for where you stop the drill. Shoulda gone horiz from the start. Buy cheap..buy twice..
I am gutted, paper loss so big not even worth selling now, so just holding and hoping that DW (Dusty Well) and PB (Probe Broken) get this right. PS just kidding with the nicknames, I'm sure they will win out... GLA
BigT0. I know that, and you know that, and a lot of LTH's know that. There are many tons of water, ballast (sand, glass or plastic), & chemicals that have been pumped down there and obviously that has to come out first (especially since it is denser than oil and gas and thus sits at the bottom f the reservoir). My point was that DW happily tells us when there is frac fluid coming out, but all some people want to hear is 'thar she blows'. Last year all we got was frac fluid then a shut in once the frac fluid extarction used up all the pressure, so naturally and perhaps falsely, some people are very nervous about a repeat performance, especially when the pressure has dropped by a factor of 10. I'm not fussed. I believe this will take some time. Its brand new, this HRZ stuff, and we only have a single small pipe down there vertically (still think we should've gone straight to horiz, but I'm no expert.) So forgive me if it sounded like I thought we had hit an underground lake. I really am not that thick !! I should have said frac fluid, I guess, not water. Soz
S4LMO, the shares in circ were 4632693932 a year ago (following the big placement to raise $17m) and today are 5557964694. Thats a 16.65% increase in shares, which doesn't quite match the related drop, esp given the extra acres, Yukon, etc etc. One of my earlier posts this week explains the nervousness shown by the SP, given that last year we were also expecting an explosion of oil and we got water and a pressure problem, so when jittery people read 'water' anywhere in an RNS, its like deja vu to them, and crash goes the SP. Of course, a lot of big investors don't have a clue technically, or are impatient, and just panic when no news, or news that doesn't say 'jackpot' , is taken as bad news, so they pull out. Fair play. They have time and profit windows that if aren't met they take their investments elesewhere where a quick buck can be made, and maybe they come back when things start moving... Once that water starts turning golden, watch SP go north at warp speed...
Thanks Reaper. Been in for a good while now, as have you. A bit bleak that I could have come in today and been in exactly the same position ito profit (except for lost interest on my hard earned). But, had I pulled it, Sod's Law stateth that we would be at £1+ today. My patience shall surely be rewarded, otherwise I might be planning a little trip to Alaska and swapping the Nitrogen tankers for Hydrogen ones !!
I think everyone is a bit 'once bitten, twice shy'. If I recall a year ago, we hit 4p just before they opended the tap and got a trickle of water. The mere mention of the dreaded H2O is therefore spooking a lot of peeps into 'oh no, not again..' territory. While DW's honesty is reassuring, his timing sucks, but gives all of us who believe a great chance to top up. having said that, I myself am a bit nervous that the pressure has dropped by a factor of 10 after just taking out a few gallons of water !! I am tempted to top up, but am not going to (and will probably regret it later, I was bitten last time, 'topping up' at 3p thinking that was the big one and then still not selling at 4p. Get that nitrogen in and blow the stuff out the ground for goodness sake. Then tell us the news, not before .... Squeaky bottom time once again.... I love/ hate this share, heart attacks and grey hair
Its just psychological. A lot of people's dreams of a quick buck got trashed when we had to shut in and the flow was nothing bet a wet phart. Now everyone is waiting for some physical affirmation of this black (actually golden) syrup, having been bitten once. We all want the movie scene of the gusher exploding out and spraying the crew black. When that happends the share price will also gusher out the ground, guaranteed. I've been in this a few years now, like MickeyM, Brom, Livin etc, have been to the pub meetings and presentations, but don't post much. I just keep it mind that these guys, before they had PB, before they had huge acres with proven reserves, had but a 20% chance of drilling success with a 20% share in a dodgy prospect in Morroco (which turned out to be a duster) , had a SP that got to 14p (250mill shares) (so MC around 1/3 of today). If we are only worth a MC of 3 x that fledgling entity with nothing to show but a slim chance of some oil, then I deserve to get taken for a ride. I think I shall hold and see, and just wish I had the cash to take adavantage of the circa 1p dip period. Damn. Hey ho, I'm breaking even at around 2.2, so no pain, the only way is up for me, even if only one drill produces !! Patience.....we've hit a few hurdles, but the prize has increased too ...