Member Info for romaron

Cox delivers a better update than AB. My initial impression is that Cox was addressing retail. There was no QA from professional analysts. Maybe they don’t turn out for AIM companies?

Sometimes AB comes over as a slightly distracted academic. He seldom does hyperbole and he doesn’t appear to enjoy them. Cox does.

One particular reference by Cox was couched in a way that satisfies all retail investors (professionals would see it a mile off) and it was about the Kyle field. I haven’t listened back but I think he mentioned 11m barrels there. All a bit pie in the sky and he did qualify it by saying the NS was all about incrementals. I’m also not too keen on mentions of 2C (that’s why Grand National lower weights can be 100-1).

BUT if you want to take this kind of approach - Bressay and Bentley have 600m to 1bn reserves. I’m not a professional and I’m not really sure of the classification of their reserves but some may well be 2p because considerable work has been done and don’t forget that they sold 130,000 barrels from the EWT on Bentley.

If it sounds like I’m negative towards Serica I’m not. I am jealous of their lottery win with Rhum and dividends but I think they’ve gone as far as they can as a small producer and being on AIM is another constraint imo. Whether a deal can be struck is out of our control. It will all be about terms. If it doesn’t happen there’ll be another bus along although they are getting less frequent.

Marine Le Pen gets 4 years for embezzlement. What do you reckon Ed Miliband will get?

Haven’t moved for sometime but moved lower today 103.5 > 102.75

Seems counter intuitive as bonds in a merged company with a better rating should do well. Maybe switch to equity but then off a smidge. Probably overthinking it.

Likely we’ll still be in the dark tomorrow.

Talking to an Aussie pal yesterday. They have more gas than they need in W.A. They export rather than send to other Australian states because China and others pay better. We have imported LNG from Australia. Maybe it will increase. We are known as being happy to pay over the odds and the carbon excesses show up in another countries figures.

In another virtue signalling instance the tribunal for the sacked ex Drax employee continues and “The case is of public interest” said the judge. The tribunal is deluged by 14,000 pages of documents (same tactic used against Ofgem) with an enormous legal team and costs (its a tribunal remember) runs into eight figures - a lot to spend for a company with nothing to be defensive about, one might think.

Drax appears to be a dysfunctional, badly managed and vindictive outfit. You may your own views on the sustainability of tree burning as well as the suitabilty Of Drax as the ongoing recipient of billions in public money - all the while continuing to be the UK’s biggest single emitter of CO2.

Echoes of Ecotricity and Dale Vince. Another bullying receiver of subsidies who uses them to attack anybody (law fare) who dares suggest he’s not perfect. He doesn’t support Hamas; he just likes keffiyehs and going on marches and rallies.

Hi Lochnagary - thanks for posting. I normally take IC and others with a pinch of salt. Many of these pundits follow a variety of stocks and there is always a strong element of CYA. Being on consensus keeps you out of trouble. They also concentrate on the here and now. The future is often a distant destination and of course unpredictable.

I’ve no axe to grind but some of these comments resonate with me and I’ve attended AGMs since 2015 and remember challenging AB with what I thought (in my ignorance) excessive decline rates. I can’t be bothered to get exact year but we were in trouble and basically capex had come to a halt. Without regular drilling old field declines are in high teens. Kraken is on hold to an extent because of Waldorf and another reason to delay capex is a better fiscal environment or tax treatment in the future.

I trust the management of Enquest and their performance ratings are up there with the best. If they are delaying capex there will be a reason.

The debt appears to have moved marginally above the 0.5 leverage but is still ridiculously low. I’m more impressed that RBL is untouched (tied up with merger imo).

I think Enquest management is ticking over as there could well be structural and personnel changes ahead that means it is prudent to delay. Management is stretched atm. You don’t usually read that in market commentary.

Sad news that juststopoil are disbanding. Their object achieved apparently. A cynic might say that once Dale leaves you and other beneficiaries you find that living on thin air isn’t healthy. It has spread to other organisations whose funding and donations have dried up. Maybe Dale wants to distance himself? After all he runs a company that is only profitable because of grants and subsidies. It must be a worrying time in the renewables industry because people are beginning to ask just what is the difference between a charity and a company that can only exist because of subsidies?

Of course the answer is to create a bogeyman in “catastrophic climate change”. Then you can create religious arguments where belief doesn't require proof or evidence.

In a strange way I’ll miss ‘em. Their energy and delusion impressed me.

…but EnQuest can. All this talk about NPV, DCF and debt is ignoring the fact that it is risk takers and entrepreneurs that move companies forward. “Debt is your friend” is a view of industry veteran and our ex-Chairman Jim Buckee(as long as you don’t have too much). In fact I look with suspicion at any company without debt. It often indicates “run out of ideas”. Serica is like a rich widow who wants someone to “invest” her nest egg. Her late husband (ex Sqz founders) struck it rich when the US allowed Rhum to start operating again.

Mercuria has similarities to EIG imo and although Sqz weren’t having Friday champagne parties in Santini’s or barbecues on their rooftop like Premier they don’t appear to have been impressed by Sqz management. Make no mistake - we’re talking to Mercuria, the other investors will fall into line. Accountants are important just as compliance and HR are but they become hidebound in their processes. People like Peter Palumbo and Roger Dudding had a vision and I suspect so has Amjad Bseisu. Put a price on that? There are few companies (any?) that offer what EnQuest have. I’d say that Mercurial know what they’re doing and if a deal is done I suggest AB counts his fingers after the handshake.

*The analogy of bees can’t fly is that traditionalists (like accountants) looked at the design of a bumblebee and said with that design it couldn’t fly. That’s the risk with narrow-mindedness.

Https://www.solicitorsjournal.com/sjarticle/serica-energy-executive-citizens-arrested

Hang on - I've got to go. Someone banging loudly on the front door.

Https://www.citizensarrestnetwork.org/

These juvenile stunts only further alienate the public from these Net Zero nutters. They should be arrested for wasting police time.

Wrong KO. I don't think the MM gives a t*ss and will await some impetus. There are always the 3 'D's to tick over (Death, Divorce and Debt) but I think we're seeing another 'D' when you discuss NS oilies with most investors - "Despair".

Throw in the algorithm and BOTs that nobody has remembered to turn off and that's all you're left with.

We'll have to wait I'm afraid until something is released (or leaked) either from parties involved or government and its agencies. I'm a bit confused by the Sun story. Politics moves in mysterious ways.

The two young players that have passed through the EnQuest Academy have come to the attention of the Premier League. Insiders say that Equinor will implement the clause in their contract when they released Bressay to EnQuest as first refusal on offering a contract. Bentley was out of contract and is largely an unknown but did perform very well on the bigger stage when he was being scouted by BP.

Tarmak 15:07. I'm leaning towards your view that SQZ fails. I don't know why but the news about Jackdaw and Rosebank going ahead seems to have slipped by. Perhaps it was intentional by Reeves to have announced it in The Sun on Sunday but it was picked up by other media sources. It is massive for us. I'd expect Bressay & Bentley to get the go ahead. With Bressay I'd expect Equinor to step in from the background (imo they parked it with us) whilst Bentley has practically no value on our balance sheet but has produced oil in the past that sold for a very good price.

Events always move markets. What can SQZ bring us?

They are using 54p a therm for the current ESIM threshold price which was decided during a drunken, blindfolded darts match. It bears no relationship to the present reality https://www.statista.com/statistics/1174560/average-monthly-gas-prices-uk/

AI had this to say "In 2024, UK gas prices per therm fluctuated, reaching a high of 141.25p/therm on Monday, February 14th, and a low of 56.46p/therm on February 23rd, with prices generally trending towards higher levels."

I wonder if O&G is treated more harshly than tobacco or spirits?

Almost anything put in place of ESIM is better than this farcical, non-existent windfall tax.

Https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/new-tax-plans-for-oil-and-gas-sector-are-in-the-pipeline/ar-AA1Bmgro

At first glance this appears esoteric and I wouldn't mind having Stevo's view? Pinsent Masons are highly reputable and the author is a partner there. It doesn't mean it will happen but I've thought for some time that the EPL panic measure conflating oil and gas is like joining lamb and beef or apples and pears together. They're close but don't follow in exact lockstep. I think it makes us potentially even more attractive. Because of our tax situation (in simple terms - I'm not Tarmak or Stevo) if there was a backstop just on oil it could mean that there is no surcharge if the price of oil drops below a certain level. Other companies would be making losses if there are no offsets but we would have no surcharge and our tax credits mean we effectively pay no tax. You could argue that it isn't that different to what we have now but it takes away the need for gas to be lower per therm and I'm not sure that the cost of LNG doesn't impact our NG and keeps the price artificially high. It would mean that we have an insurance/protection against lower oil prices and that is worth many £millions because we would suffer less than other companies in the UKCS. It is also something that the public would be totally unaware of and have little political opposition, especially in this new "security turn" of Starmer.

"Heathrow is currently served by aviation fuel pipelines, and the local area is covered by the natural gas network, so providing fuel for onsite generation should not be difficult. In every respect apart from net zero, installation of a gas-fired power plant may be the most efficient choice.

Of course, this would be opposed by environmental groups, and while a 60 MW gas plant at Heathrow is not going to make a material difference to climate change, activists would likely prefer the airport to close than to increase its onsite fossil fuel generation. Ironically, replacing the biomass plant with a gas plant would be better for the environment (Heathrow can always plant trees regardless of the fuel it uses) as gas power stations emit less carbon dioxide from their stacks than biomass plants do."

From a longer in depth article by Kathryn Porter of Watt-Logic. Interestingly Heathrow does have a biomass plant for some of its energy. It needs electricity from the grid to function so was unavailable because of the substation fire.

That’s us retail investors. The minority. Eventual outcome for the ENQ/SQZ deal will be AB/Mercuria choices (leverage). I think we can all see what Mercuria are doing regards Tailwind and we could be instrumental in speeding it up. SQZ was a lottery win and now they aren’t sure how to spend it imo. We’ve kicked the tyres, checked the mileage and found out Triton’s big ends are dodgy. I doubt it is a deal breaker though I did think about getting Richard Hall back but he is recently appointed at a different Dana. The EP solution is unlikely to work from my limited knowledge but it shouldn’t be hard to check out its status on ‘warm stack’ at Nigg.

ENQ is the bigger partner. It isn’t in a financial hole and has plenty of diversification. Its biggest hurdle is UK based production and a fiscal environment that is destroying the UK O&G industry. It is a financial engineering opportunity and that is what the UKCS is becoming as pointed out today in the Seascape Investor Presentation. The numbers around DEWA are impressive and some of the multiples will apply to ENQ too. At QA most questions were about ENQ and their guy said something about the rumour/leak regarding the proposed deal. It emphasises (for me) how big we are with our other interests too (Vietnam, Seligi + not mentioned SVT, CCS and Veri).

I asked a Muslim pal about whether fasting is a good or bad thing when under stress in negotiations [AB fasts during Ramadan] and his reply was encouraging: “fasting gives you razor like focus as you’re not worried about food or other things you refrain from during this month.”

Should have YE numbers next week. May release some more news. I thought Badenoch’s speech was encouraging yesterday but drowned out by other news. Still, it is a firm position stake driven in. I doubt you’ll convert any of the extremes BUT remember that the maxim that parties win from the centre-ground remains just as true today as it ever did and that’s where it has moved imo. The public and voters are judging through their energy bills. The fringes just look increasingly like 'nutters' and Dale Vince is now appearing without a keffiyeh draped around his neck whilst he searches for another crusade to make millions from.

* At the moment, I think I’d prefer a drone factory rather than one making wind turbines.

GMB aren't alone but are in the lead. https://www.unitetheunion.org/campaigns/oil-and-gas-no-ban-without-a-plan

Great find Frac. GMB appears to be the only union championing O&G.

It is confusing and the bigger outfits have teams whose job is to make sure the rules are followed religiously - even over zealously. Smaller outfits don't always have this luxury and although I've dipped in I haven't seen anything from Cobas or Helikon (easily missed) but at the back of my mind I remember ARCM and Premier. Overseas don't pay the same attention and may not always be aware of reporting rules.

With what is going on I'd suggest that the regular share register monitoring that Craig does with JP Morgan is under constant scrutiny atm. He must be busy but the figures will be close at hand and he may share.

Yellow card Therapist - warnings to Egremont and Dumbly - I think I suffer from ADHD (contracted on this message board) and these 3 posters keep bringing things up that send me down yet another rabbit-hole. The Filter button could be a final option.

I had to read the Therapist link a few times because with a superficial glance it seems a repeat of the Egremont one. It isn't.

The Therapist one is from The Treasury & HMRC and the Egremont one is from DESNZ. One is serious and aimed at the professionals and requires a level of knowledge and experience that really narrows it down to those working closely with the industry - that's the Treasury. The DESNZ one looks kinda opportunist and you end up asking why? I believe politicking is at work here which is beyond me as we are fed only through the media which prefers a frenzy which is nearly always artificial.

The Treasury response deadline is 28 May and DESNZ 30 April. The grown ups after the unruly neighbours next door.

If you read the Treasury report there is a lack of rhetoric and a lot of common sense in it. Sample: "3.20 This consultation will therefore consider the relationship between oil and gas production and profits and consider scenarios in which one commodity is subject to unusually high prices while the other is not. The new mechanism will aim to recognise the differences in the markets."

It also has this "1.6 The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has launched a separate consultation and call for evidence, titled ‘Building the North Sea’s Energy Future’1, which sets out the framework for the future of energy in the North Sea. The government is committed to providing stability and certainty in both the fiscal and regulatory regimes. "

I've no idea when the responses will be made public but do these 2 reports conflict? I'm confused enough.

I've mentioned Dumbly because he found an obscure video that I had to watch that took several hours of my life away without any consideration for the fact that I'm running out of runway.

There are so many milestones coming up and I'm not sure if we're getting any closer or being sent on diversions. I've asked Unite to mention the petition to its members.