Member Info for romaron

It would possibly be the wrong signal to send as we are largely NS based. You can hardly stop investment and at the same time engage in Director buying. Then there is the possibility of M&A talks. I don't think Gareth Penny intends to be a passive & defensive Chairman.

So Rachel will cut back on here £28bn annual spend on new green jobs and technology. Maybe to the £24.2bn that could have gone into the UKNS? Only problem with that is that capital is fungible too and can go offshore. It can't really be returned to the shareholders of the remaining NS assets as they are struggling with the EPL and threats to remove the investment allowance . The 'oil giants' left the building some years ago. It is quite simple to me. Run existing assets into the ground and make plans elsewhere. I don't see the returns with renewables and I think if the UK O> industry was honest, neither do they.

Thank goodness for the tax wrapper.

"Despite the potential risks to investments, polls suggest that Labour's plan to ban new oil and gas projects is popular among Brits, with 40% support, compared to 32% opposed." WoodMac

'Polls' and 'suggest' are a pathetic and populist use of words and handy to dip in and out of as nobody knows which poll or how the question was worded/phrased. I'd like to ask 'would you be prepared to go back to Covid lockdown conditions to stop oil and gas production in the UKNS'.

"Some $30bn (£24.2bn) of investment in new UK energy projects is at risk if Labour wins the next election, a top energy consultancy has warned."

You don't need Labour to win. It is happening now and it is due to this TORY government. It might even be better under Labour; let's face reality, it can't get much worse! Indeed, a "proper windfall tax" should only apply if there is a windfall and not appeasing an unelected minority. People will still want cheap energy, mobility and foreign travel.

I admit that I haven't been following Hurricane and had a quick read up of the finalising of the takeover by Prax. I'm sure you could make some kind of valuation link for us from that deal but that isn't what interested me. Prax are more a refining group and my first thought was 'energy security'. Not for the country but for their products and feedstock. Ineos did and are likely continuing to do something similar with gas.

I think Prax know that people don't worry too much about the everyday plastic they use or how their paint etc. is produced. You may replace some refined products with renewables but only Labour think that it will be done by 2030.

It means that there is an underlying base that will scoop up anything that is cheap and being abandoned. I don't think we are in that category but likely to be in competition with them. Unfortunately they have the profits from refining that seem to have escaped the EPL.

*Refining made the owners of Prax and Ineos billionaires.

I was going to say it was recession but I think you have to add protectionism [US in particular]. Both will reduce trade and the demand for oil and gas. I’m not particularly worried though as non-investment in the industry means that natural declines will outpace demand reduction. I read the weekend papers and little to report. Some totally meaningless drivel in the ST about Keir Starmer launching, along with boy wonder Ed, the climate change announcements this month. After the Rachel Reeves backtracking on her borrowing plans (£28bn) to the second half of the next parliament. Pressure is slowly building on Labour to add some detail to their plans and 2030 keeps getting mentioned. A target to get to clean power by 2030 with a fast track scheme is doomed to failure imo but will please the Greens. Targets and closing down of fossil production is more important. Protest was summed up by Dominic Lawson saying that small, unelected groups preventing, through physical means, the ability of the majority to legally go about their business is an interference with democracy, not a defence of it. Most of what we are seeing in this political vacuum is pointless – sound and fury signifying nothing.

What really interests me is that I haven’t read anything about Labour’s reaction to the EPL floor. They are steering clear and it is unusual that their knee-jerk reaction to criticise anything the Tories do is missing. Am I missing something here?

The Tories have abandoned us and the EPL floor is a dying administration trying to hand tidbits to various groups which are worthless upon analysis. Labour have no answers for the O&G industry and expect us to be gone in a cloud of dust from the clean energy sprint to 2030. By then we’ll have disappeared in the noise as the country descends into planning chaos, finds renewables underperform and the grid collapses and blackouts become common.

I’m a minority here but think I have my result purely because there is NO alternative. EnQuest have to run the business down and we are more an accounting tax wrapper than a business with a future. We are still worth more than our market cap but the whole industry is uninvestable with one party relentlessly undermining any future it might have and the other party saying they will be more draconian if they get elected.

Oil and gas can only get more valuable but the UK have turned their back on it. Transition - NO - Cliff edge YES.

What we're forgetting here is that it is a joint enterprise crime. Rishi Sunak is the Chancellor who brought in the windfall tax. They cannot abandon it for political reasons which always trump the future of the country or any industry. We should just drop and ignore the Tories and prepare to fight the incoming Labour party. At least we'll have the GMB on our side and I imagine a few others when the truth finally dawns.

Sunak continues to obfuscate on policies that were put in place during a fit of panic. It is a shame that Labour couldn't be making political capital out of the Tories predicament. It isn't just the politicians closing down the industry. Non investment in the industry will do it even quicker.

It is amazing that even business leaders are abandoning the Tories. It is a waste of time lobbying them. Labour will inherit a poisoned chalice with renewables having no chance of living up to their promises. Seriously, have the Tories no idea of the importance of our remaining oil and gas?

We moved from coal to coal gas to natural (North Sea) gas. From a cheap fuel to another cheap but cleaner fuel. We don't have that with renewables. It doesn't do all that is required and the costs are coming home to roost. Eventually it will get through to the public a.k.a voters.

Clean energy ain't cheap - its just cleaner on paper if you forget the carbon needed to produce it. But if you believe that renewables are 9X cheaper than fossil fuels please produce the evidence and figures? You can't!

So Georgia is against pensions and helping old people too? Many shareholders don't even know the companies they are invested in and many actually have quite modest pensions. People who worked in nursing and care, education and industry - they are totally ignorant, often willfully, of simple economics. They demand their systems (which don't work) to be imposed on the majority.

This really is a follow on to Aok 08:20 with my take. Political appointments are often to do with owed favours, position and friends within the party and sadly, sometimes the best available. From our perspective Hunt is a liability imo and I, for now, expect Labour to be the next government. I wrote to the GMB Union this week and will continue to ask for breakdowns and figures for Labour's Green dreams, businesses and projects. I have a FOI in the works that may produce results. I am attending an Intelligence Squared debate in July "Is Climate Activism Working?". They say keep your friends close and enemies even closer. Believe it or not but one of the speakers is Phoebe Plummer whose only claim to fame is throwing soup at 'Sunflower' at the National Gallery. Hardly a debate when the 3 speakers so far (one to be announced) are firm activists. I will speak if I get the chance. I expect to be in a minority.

"Oil is not a hard act to follow. It's actually an impossible act to follow" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCogtFKP2TY - it has such energy density and portability that without it [the aim of activists] we would be taken back to something like the worst days of Covid lockdown. No flights, car trips, restaurants going bust, foods unavailable and costly etc... Governments would find this unpalatable and their electorate would not accept it especially in the UK and Europe asking "Why the restrictions? - they don't have them in China, India or the US".

For me it is the only logical result if Labour go ahead with their crazy dreams and if Hunt is a problem you ain't seen nothing yet if they hold on to Ed Miliband post election. We each can add to the drip, drip of resistance and challenge the statements made for pure political opportunism and(what they think) the populist vote. They are wrong. I was out last night and did a poll on whether people, especially our kids, ever talked about 'climate crisis'. They don't! They also don't care so much about Ukraine but if you asked "is Putin a monster" many would probably agree but do sod all about it. Take their holidays and treats away and see what happens!

Did anybody ask about him at the AGM?

Ooops wrong board

Did anybody ask about him at the AGM?

Spooky - and they come in three's

1. Got my Labour Party membership card through the post today.

2. My MP Bambos Charalambous has just been suspended.

3. Rachel Reeves has backtracked (delayed) plans to borrow £28bn a year for a green prosperity fund.

Talk is that her plans were as sensible and well thought out as Liz Truss's. I can't make her numbers add up as it is hard to value hopium and fairy dust. I don't think it is her enthusiasm to spunk money on renewables and impossible plans to improve the housing stock that has waned but the awkward realisation that the income side of the ledger is empty. The magic money tree only works if you're in opposition.

Anyone out there looking for staff? I used to be a programmer for autocorrect. They fried me for no ducking raisin.

I go back to the 2022 AGM. I said to AB that we should just run the company into the ground. I daresay that a few years down the road when Hopium has failed to work and people are rioting in the street they will allow new field investment in the NS under 'energy security'. That won't help us. O&G will go up because of scarcity. We are going backwards. I cannot see any company seeing what Hunt has done today as helping the O&G industry. I read somewhere that economists and engineers often disagree because of the direction they come from. I get that but cannot understand what planet politicians come from.

In the 7 year sprint does Labour expect us to all be driving EV's and have heat pumps by 2030? There will be a lot of money heading towards insulation firms so invest in them but be ready to sell in case a WFT is imposed on them. It will make the Covid PPE balls-up look petty. The base line for O&G does not take into account supply chain problems and rising costs for new fields (if anybody is crazy enough to consider them) and the allowance is unattractive because of the threat of WFT and the incompetence of its imposition. It says if prices drop and you lose money - tough. If as part of the cycle there are better years and you make a decent profit we will tax you to extinction.

Both parties have said that the game is up for oil and gas companies in the NS. Push bar to exit.

A Labour Minister on Wednesday stated on the BBC that they would begrudgingly not oppose Rosebank but that is the last major oil or gas field for the UK if Labour get elected. There would then be an "energy sprint" to 2030 when "our reliance will be on home grown renewable energy".

Hunt has just underwritten this Labour promise.

The country needs a lot of new 'Rosebanks' and this is basically a decision that the fear of Gary Smith of the GMB Union is now a fact. 2030 is the cliff edge. The declines (and the industry can do its own CPR) would show that infills could not match the declines and by 2030 it would be basically renewables and the residual O&G production if needed will be met by IMPORTS. The bet is that the transition will go from 20/80 renewables/fossil in 7 years (and I'm being reasonable) to say 80/20 renewables/fossil. Declines will be in high teens and whilst on paper there might be 10/12 years the economics bring the demise of the basin closer.

Hunt reminds me of Caroline Lucas with that permanent smug look of 'I know better' and I think he is a closet climate activist. He has done a far better job than the Greens, Labour and JSO in killing off the NS O&G industry.

I think that EnQuest is NO longer an O&G company but an interesting tax wrapper that will interest an EIG/Waldorf type fund that will extract the remaining asset value and squeeze the last drop of oil and value from the company. O&G is long term - our future is short term. AB will possibly move to the US where his son is at Yale. His Foundation can still be run from the UK if he decides. It is not uncommon for parents wanting to be closer to their children and with the Non-Dom benefit gone, what is the point of staying.

Time to accept facts. I think our break up value is worth more than the current price so that is a positive. There is no future for a UK O&G company and frankly I wouldn't invest in a UK Renewable company either.

The price reaction is unsurprising. Retail investors were hoping for more and they're the only people currently playing around in EnQuest. Analysts and banks will like it I imagine but the industry is still a pariah.

All decisions are political and that is exactly what this is. Hunt has served and we are now awaiting Labour's response after their executive committee on energy (juststopoil) have been consulted.

Don't forget our tax credits.

At the AGM apologies were passed on for missing Directors for non-attendance - no reason given. From memory I heard 2 names but there are 3 women NED's. Others may recall better.

I don't know the quorum for an AGM but we've had more in the past. A board meeting will have a quorum I'm sure. One thing I know about women is they are more conscientious and hard-working than us and to have all 3 absent at the same time is statistically impossible imo. I'm thinking aloud here but were they elsewhere - in the building or nearby? Executive and strategic meetings happen all the time and if anything was being discussed by the board it would follow what had been happening at the coal-face and the Chairman, CEO and CFO would always be in the loop. The NEDs come after. What if they were elsewhere being briefed or being brought up to date?

It is rare for companies not to take advantage of AGMs and tag on a convenient board meeting. The alternative reason is that there wasn't one because nothing is happening and was unnecessary - I can't answer that.

Gareth Penny seemed in a hurry to move things forward - AB not so much. He seemed particularly wistful and unstressed. I wonder if this is his last AGM? There were quite a few people there and many were suited. I don't know who they were. Having 3 NEDs missing is unusual (they were there last year from memory). We are too polite and I wish I'd pushed harder about their absence.

AB stated before QA that they are always open for business and happy to discuss potential mergers and approaches. It did stop a direct question and is a neat side-step for any awkward question.

I know a few of the overseas investors were mildly concerned as it was a break from previous AGMs. It could be something to do with Gareth Penny and the fact that 3 NEDs were leaving - Carl Hughes, Howard Paver were there. I'm not sure about John Winterman.

It's bugging me. Have I missed something or is my AGM protocol weak?

Why the hostility Deadly? I have the previous poster on filter too so had to log out to check. He is a vagrant troll who flies in from time to time.

I want ITH to do well because we have mutual interest. Where are the retail holders of this stock - there is little message board activity here? Anyway, there is a point to this post. Yesterday on Politics Live from 1:32.50 (you can get it on BBC iplayer) Nick Thomas-Symonds Shadow Secretary for Trade said that whilst the Labour Party would honour Rosebank coming into production because it would probably be past the finishing line when they take the baton they would not be granting the same facility to Cambo.

EnQuest also have two large fields that could impact the industry and reduce our import bills which will carry on past 2030 even though NTS said that Labour would be promoting a "clean energy sprint towards 2030" in energy terms when "our reliance will be on home grown renewable energy". If NTS thinks that the renewables which currently supply (say) 20% of our energy needs will replace fossils by 2030 then he is delusional. Another Welsh windbag.

I think every retail holder of oil and gas stocks involved in the North Sea should write to their MP pointing out the idiocy of these kind of statements and the damage they are doing to this country.