Member Info for Penguins

Ian,

You said it - TH2 posts = useless information.

But why defend one of the worst and prolific rampers over the years on this board who either has no idea how risky the projects UKOG embarked on are - but claims how successful they will be - or is a liar.

But it is important that other posters can see how ridiculous and endlessly wrong TH2 has been trying to persuade others to buy into UKOG, a company that has serially failed with projects likely to fail while claiming to expect not just success but success at a national or transformational level - perhaps after the first couple of times it might dawn on posters like TH2 that any claim by UKOG needs to be examined against the available evidence.

In the case of hydrogen almost every article that 'positive' posters have linked commenting about hydrogen storage is more likely to be evidence that UKOG's chances of being selected for support are extremely slim.

Perhaps they didn't realise there's already hydrogen storage in salt caverns:-

'To date, there are only a small number of underground storage facilities for pure hydrogen in operation worldwide, including salt caverns at three locations in Texas, USA, and a single facility comprising three caverns at Teesside in the north-east of England, UK. These projects have demonstrated the commercial feasibility for salt cavern hydrogen storage over several decades.

I just followed the link that was in ocelot's post that the rampers were creaming themselves over:

'Hydrogen storage infrastructure will be critical in supporting the government's low carbon hydrogen production ambitions and the mission to achieve clean power by 2030. To enable this in the near term, hydrogen storage at scale will be required ...

We intend to hold a first meeting with interested suppliers on 11th December at 9.30am (subject to change).

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/6e2aabee-9be3-4bb4-80ba-ea5daf165fe7

Funny that none of them mentioned this bit:-

'Contract is suitable for SMEs?

No

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No'

Hmmm - this is the government's definition of a SME:-

An SME is any organisation that has fewer than 250 employees and a turnover of less than €50 million or a balance sheet total less than €43 million. A breakdown of the different organisation sizes is in the below table.

BTW VCSEs are voluntary, community and social enterprises.

TH2,

The only thing the real trolls care about is getting a 'pump' underway before the next raise, no doubt aided by a vague, carefully worded, RNS. The unlikelihood of success is for the mugs they hope to draw in to find out when the share price drops - then plummets on results or another raise - just like for every project so far.

You never see any detail from these trolls as to exactly why what UKOG is doing is going to be successful (apart from repeating UKOG PR), vs the often detailedmreasoning why UKOG will fail.

In the case of hydrogen storage UKOG has kept silent on alignment with the assessment criteria for support except when mentioning the recently secured East Yorkshire lease - after years of pushing the portland Port site that is remote from anywhere - even the distant Solent Cluster hasn't featured in the awards for hydrogen production support or offshore wind farms.

Instead they link any report or article that mentions hydrogen - almost none of which mention storage - and worse, no mention of Southern England with regard to early production or demand for hydrogen

Giantsqud,

It's 13.362 billion (RNS 22/11)

Nowhere near, UKOG had ca 29.5 bilion shares just before the 10 to 1 consolidation - which was March this year - since then they've more than quadrupled.the number of shares, and likely will add another 5 billion early next year - UKOG desperately needs to pump the share price otherwise that would likely only raise £1 million or less, and crash the SP (again).

Posters dreaming of 1p are imagining a company with 3 leases one for a disused port, the other two for farmland, a suspended oil field, obligation work in Turkey to do or a penalty to pay, a non- existent field adjacent to Godley Bridge they're hoping someone will take on and drill, a well site which needs restoring and the well abandoned and 10% of Horndean (less than 15 bopd net) to be worth £160,000,000 on the hope of beating Centrica for a revenue support allocation in East Yorkshire sometime next year.

Just to save someone posting it - having already wasted £100,000,000 on projects with little hope of the success suggested by UKOG - but the likelihood of failure explained by the supposed 'derampers'.

TH2,

The lobbying Centrica did was to get depleted field storage included in the first hydrogen storage allocation round.

So why would Centric bother with UKOG. All UKOG have is a empty (?) farmers (?) field, something I'm sure Centrica could easily get if they wanted to go into cavern stoage - but it's clear they want to get an allocation in the first storage round for making Rough hydrogen ready for the NE.

Government backing only comes after UKOG apply, get selected and sign a contract for allocation - apparently if selsected, in 2026.

All the information in the public domain suggests that UKOG won't be successful in the first round - whether or not they have the promise of committed finance from an 'international investor'.

1 Portland port and the other Dorset site aren't in the right place ie not in the NE or NW

2 Centrica are more likely to be selected as the preferred option for the NE '2030' hydrogen storage - and there's the possibility already in place caverns could be converted as hydrogen becomes produced in quantity for industry and natural gas industrial use drops.

ZYX,

These sharks don’t care whether or not what UKOG claim is likely to be achievable, just as long as at some point it looks like there’s progress, or linkable unrelated news that appears to be positive for UKOG (currently anything with the word ‘hydrogen’ in it) that generates some twitter or bulletin board hype that might kick off a ‘pump’.

For instance it must be hundreds of times that ocelot has repeated UKOG PR without a single word pointing out that the last great thing promoted by UKOG, and then repeated by ocelot and many others on here, has either immediately or eventually proved to be a complete failure.

Seems they want to ignore that Portland Port (just like HH, Loxley, Basur and Pinarova) is in the wrong place – remote even from the wind farm and hydrogen barren Solent Cluster and requiring a ca 80km pipeline ‘spur’ to connect to the planned SGN H2 Connect pipelines in the Solent area.

Hence the scramble since earlier this year to obtain a site nearer the Solent and a site in the north of England, whilst apparently continuing to spend all the cash not used for salaries on Portland port.

The NE and NW, where unlike Dorset, there’s large offshore wind farms in place and government support for planned wind farms and planned hydrogen production. There’s also planned or repurposed pipelines to link production to anticipated demand. There’s also hydrogen storage planned by Centrica (converting Rough) that will be likely in competition against UKOG’s potential application for revenue support. There’s also existing natural gas cavern storage that could relatively cheaply be converted to hydrogen storage that might compete for early years storage.

Ocelot has form on promoting unverified accounts claiming UKOG share buys.

In June 2022 ocelot copied a post from the other site (starting with AD) claiming to be from Simon Caukwell buying 500 million UKOG shares - when with little research it was possible to find a credible, but not recently used, Simon Caukwell account.

This was my reply then:-

'The explanation is that it wasn't a trade by either of the Simon cawkwells and it was just an attempt to put a positive spin on a large trade at virtually the lowest price of the week which would to most sane investors appear to be a sell.

By using a well known traders name (though by reputation a shorter) it added a level of authenticity that enabled ocelot to repeat it here - including the 1.5p in a year, but because someone else claimed it it isn't a ramp (in his opinion).

In a year's time there will probably be at least 20billion shares in issue (unless there's a consolidation) meaning the prediction is of a market cap of an even more unlikely £300,000,000.'

UKOG actually achieved 20 billion shares a few months later in September 2022, and by end June 2023 the SP was 0.0585p - the SP had halved in a year, not 10+ bagged.

Madeitup,

Unfortunately 2050 is a long way away, the First Hydrogen Storage Allocation Round is addressing the need for storage up to and including the early 2030s, and of course assessing the ability of the companies seeking revenue support to excute their plans.

Not getting on and abandoning BB-1 and restoring the wellsite isn't a good look - is it because equipment isn't available or is it contractors require cash in escrow before embarking on work for struggling companies?

Clearly Centrica asked for depleted gas field storage (which was previously excludrd) to be included in the storage round

This is only bad news for UKOG who having eventually managing to lease a potential site in the NE find Centrica is likely to be a competitor for revenue support for NE storage - if already existing natural gas cavern storage is also allowed to apply for support that would be a double whammy to UKOG's chances of being a successful applicant.

NESO, In their advice to government (National Energy System Operator's 'Clean Power 2030' report) they are clearly seeing battery, hydro and liquid air as the storage medium for excess electricity in the near term to 2030. Their view of hydrogen storage:-'However, large-scale hydrogen storage appears unlikely before 2030 and relative costs for hydrogen and gas with CCS are uncertain.'

The 'positive' view appears to be that as so much cash is slopping around some is bound to come UKOG's way regardless of the merits of the project or the ability of the company to handle it, let alone multiple storage projects. The recent securing of two further sites appears to suggest that the Portland Port site where UKOG has spent over 2 years developing a plan is not likely to gain support. Strange that the only likely (possible?) user of that site until national transport infrastructure is in place, ExxonMobil, hasn't supplied a LOS yet a company with zero chance of using it until national infrastructure is in place has.

The government is clearly investing in:-

Wind farms, Solar, Tidal, Hydro, Carbon capture / blue hydrogen and trial green hydrogen production.

All these, to some extent, have been awarded funding or revenue support although the model in most cases is that private funding is required to build, and the development expenditure is recovered by revenue levels that are guaranteed by government.

The hydrogen storage revenue support round was meant to have the final instructions for applications issued Q2 2024, these won't be issued until Q1 2025.

Yes, the government is intent on backing clean energy but until there is major hydrogen production and national transport infrastructure to support demand away from industrial areas that already have significant natural gas storage there is no need to rush to develop large scale dedicated storage - it may be that it's expected that as hydrogen production ramps up and it replaces natural gas in industrial processes and power generation that the storage facilities already in place will be re-engineered to take excess hydrogen for some time into the future - it's pretty clear that the power grid operator's modelling is not seeing an early requirement for hydrogen storage, perhaps because of cost and / or likelihood of significant early production.

Ocelot, like so many posters, cares not if a project is viable or likely to succeed - just so long as along the journey to failure there's an opportunity to fool others into 'investing'.

Ocelot

Just because there's money being spent it won't necessarily be coming UKOG's way - hydrogen spend won't just be on storage, which won't be just for new caverns - although UKOG have been promoting Portland port for over 2 years they don't appear to have progressed very far.

UKOG has leased sites that if they can get committed funding, and then the government chooses the project to get a guarantee of revenue support, they could embark on developing salt cavern storage, which will take years to leach and only when completed and being used will revenue support kick in.

But the only site that might be in the right place for early 2030s storage is one they have only recently leased in East Yorkshire. Unfortunately for UKOG it is in an area where Centrica will probably be offering to convert Rough to hydrogen storage, and it's possible that one of the already operating salt cavern storage sites may also be competing.

Assuming that only 2 projects are selected to get a revenue guarantee, one in the NW, one in the NE - UKOG's chances of making the cut look poor. It will become clearer when the government releases the final criteria for applying and the basis for assessment of the bids next year.

Ocelot,

there are already salt caverns in the NE - and it would be logical to utilise those caverns for hydrogen as natural gas demand for electricity generation drops - and those sites will be well placed for gas grid connections to industrial use able to be converted, as would Rough. These sites also wouldn't be unknown quatities for new caverns to be leached.

Centrica will be busy lobbying - almost certainly more effectively than UKOG - for revenue support for Rough conversion as the NE main long term hydrogen storage - and would probably prefer use of existing cavern storage over what would be a competing bid. Of course Centrica would have no problem funding the necesssary works and a thorough plan to do it - which would remove any uncertainty that would surely be the case both financially and technically for UKOG with their untested site.

Ocelot,

'advanced discussions (placing RNS of 19/11)'

'The Company is also in discussion with a significant international trading house ' (placing RNS of 12/01) - which Ocelot dutifully posted a couple of times.......

'to fully prepare and engage with further prospective strategic partners to seek, as a minimum, Letters of Support (" LOS") ' (Placing and termination of convertible Loan RNS 10/07) - only repeated once by ocelot, probably because it wasn't positive enough.

But it illustrates when UKOG bring out the 'discussions' card.

Of course they want to boost the SP by any means - but only so they can raise cash to do those many things that they need to do outside of the hydrogen storage proposal - as anyone participating in the storage venture won't be handing over cash to UKOG except to fund the application, and won't be funding anything if UKOG fail to be allowed to apply - and if they manage that only continue to committed funding if UKOG are selected to go forward to negotiate revenue support and then agree a contract - in 2026.

The question is how much of the project would they want if they did get an investor - and seeing how Angus got stitched up how stitched up will UKOG be in the details of any agreement they don't reveal - desperate BoDs seem to agree anything to keep the gravy train running even (or especially) to the detriment of SH as they've no skin in the game except receiving wages every month which also seems to take priority over everything else.

But maybe all they are in discussions about is another LOS - 'engage with further prospective strategic partners to seek, as a minimum, Letters of Support'.......?

Stockcheque,

Don't be ridiculous.

The UK may need hydrogen storage, not necessarily caverns, and certainly not UKOG's non existent caverns.

The problem for UKOG is that they've spent 2 years hyping and spending their last pennies on doing not a lot on a site with lapsed planning permission in the wrong place. Now they're scrabbling around renting a field in the NE in the hope that they can trounce what would be a far more credible application for support from Centrica.

The recent flurry of tweets app3ar to be a desperate arrest to generate a pump and dump - that certain posters are desperate to help along by repeating any mention of hydrogen whether or not it has any relevance to what UKOG are likely to manage to do.

Hmmmm.

Has UKOG suddenly remembered that they have a twitter account - silence for a month - a tweet on the 21st then 4 yesterday...or have the placees demanded some fuel for a P&D, and ocelot, as always, is ready to oblige by repeating their BS?

.......again......

So SS thinks Centrica, who lobbied to get the government to include depleted field storage so that they could qualify for revenue support for converting Rough to hydrogen storage in the first hydrogen storage round, are promoting salt caverns for large scale hydrogen storage.

Readily deliverable - from a company that's been hyping a disused dock for over 2 years and was still doing tests and reports this Summer, presumably to determine whether the site was suitable.

...and as a long time member of the DESNZ HSBM design group they got an invite.....hooray. I suspect Centrica and EPP, both likely competitors for revenue support, were also invited.

Has UKOG suddenly remembered that they have a twitter account - silence for a month - a tweet on the 21st then 4 today...or have the placees demanded some fuel for a P&D, and ocelot, as always, is ready to obligeby repeating their BS?

TH2,

UKOG rented a disused dock in mid 2022 with a lapsed planning permission to develop cavern storage. Funnily enough soon after the seismic processing meant to prove the Basur 4 location following the Basur-3 disaster of drilling without acquiring seismic first (as originally planned)

After the initial guidance about the requirements for the first hydrogen storage allocatin round, released December 2023, UKOG probably realised that the location was somewhat distant from where the hydrogen action was going to be in the nE and NW of the UK so started trying to find alternative sites - announced in the Annual Report released April 2nd this year.

Since then they've rented two fields, no doubt with break clauses, one somewhere in Dorset near where the pipeline to Portland Port might be built (though if Portland Port was developed the new site wouldn't be - and vice versa) and another near where a pipeline is planned to be laid in East Yorkshire for already supported / funded projects.

No amount of repeating any bit of 'news' about hydrogen is going to change the reality that UKOG has wasted two years hyping a site distant from the Solent Cluster which has no significant plans for green hydrogen production, no major offshore windfarms planned and ExxonMobil cancelling their CCS pipeline - and would need a ca 80km pipeline to connect the Solent area to Portland Port. Now hoping to compete against better placed and advanced likely applications in the NE and NW - Centrica and EPP.

Having said that nothing is more 'UKOG' than a project based on an empty field in the NE has more chance of being permitted to apply for revenue support than Portland Port which UKOG has been promoting for over two years.

Stockcheque,

'What that is telling us is that the Hydrogen Storage MUST be in place BEFORE renewable energy is expanded to the target the UK has set.'

This is why UKOG won't be getting revenue suppport - it will be much faster to convert natural gas storage - but how much hydrogen will be produced to be stored in the early 2030s - conversion, certainly of multiple cavern sites, could be phased to the volume of storage required with hydrogen that's displacing the need for natural gas storage.

In the advice to government (National Energy System Operator's (NESO) 'Clean Power 2030' report) they are clearly seeing battery, hydro and liquid air as the storage medium for excess electricity in the near term to 2030 . I'll repeat (yet again) their view of hydrogen storage:-'However, large-scale hydrogen storage appears unlikely before 2030 and relative costs for hydrogen and gas with CCS are uncertain.'

Ocelot,

one thing's for sure - if Centrica do apply in the first hydrogen allocation round UKOG may as well start farming on their newly leased plot in East Yorkshire. They might make a profit, which is probably something no other project they've operated has managed - even HH where the original drill cost plus the expense of HH-2/2z, several workovers and equipment purchases, not to mention the various payouts to buy equity (just Tellurian £12mm), has almost certainly exceeded any profit from the oil produced - not exactly being run by geniuses.

This from Centrica's letter to government about the First Hydrogen Allocation Round:-

'The eligibility criteria should be revised:

The eligibility criteria for the first allocation round are too tightly defined and, therefore, limit the number of projects and storage capacity that may be awarded contracts. We believe that revising the eligibility criteria will better enable the Government to achieve its strategic objectives that guide the roll-out of transport and storage infrastructure.

3 We recommend:

1. the minimum Technology Readiness Level criterion should be relaxed;

2. the exclusion of existing natural gas storage facilities should be reconsidered; and

3. the need for ‘strategic reserve’ storage should be explicitly considered'

From EPP's RNS in October stating they would apply it appears that government has certainly relaxed the rules to include '2', though we wait until next year to see the final requirements for applications - and the assessment criteria.

https://www.centrica.com/media/dnfl0k1n/centrica-response-on-hydrogen-storage-business-model-first-allocation-round.pdf

Last year just the board cost £507,000 = £42,000 a month.

Rest of staff costs were £1,538,000 = £128,000 a month

£41,000 is enough for a week, with just enough left over for the decent champers at the xmas do.