Member Info for ronwoking

My dcu holdings were transferred by my USA managers ( II,Barclays and lloyds) out of my Isas and into trading accounts.

Your shares in Hurricane energy were converted to Prax exploration DCUs on a 1for1 basis in Sept 2023.

You should have received a small cash return on the Prax DCUs in Sept 23 April 24 Oct 24 and March 25.

The payment that was due in October 25 was not made as Prax entered administration.

The DCUs were scheduled to expire worthless at the end of Sept 2026 with payments based on the net revenues from the Hurricane energy operation twice a year at the end of each March and September

The DCUs are unsecured obligations of Prax and therefore stand at the bottom of the pile of creditors of Prax.

The administrators have previously stated that there should be sufficient funds to make a payment to DCU holders in April 2026 but IMO if any payment is made it will be a very small one. The DCUs themselves have no value other than the possible payment in April 2026.

This is a short summary of a complex situation.

So IMO virtually all of the funds to be received as a result of the Hurricane takeover have all ready been paid to Hurricane shareholders and DCU holders.

Senseman

Your usual good sense posting has been replaced by a clear conspiracy attitude to all and sundry. Your rage should be directed towards Soosapillai and the other directors who drove the Prax group into the ground.

As to your views on the ethics of the administrator,perhaps you would have preferred that a £100 an hour "professional" was hired in a provincial town a la Angela Rayner. Due diligence requires a process that can consume many hours of what some may regard as useless or repetative work,,,,but it must be followed and it is expensive.Just look at the cost of govt inquiries.

I do not clap Teneo .My post was intended to direct posters to the information available to them to demonstrate that there never was just one buyer,but a reasonably large group of interested parties.,which if the prospects of Prax UL were as golden as you think they are , would have delivered much higher bids.

I understand your frustration at the fate of Hurricane and Prax that has cost you ...and many others including me , a lot of money ,but on this subject my respect for your postings has been dented.

By the way city professionals are paid a lot more that £500 an hour these days. In 2007 when I was an expert witness in a banking dispute i was paid £800 an hour .

Further to my earlier posting Serica has declared an "economic date" for the Prax UL acquisition of July 1 .That implies that the financial benefits of subsequent uplifts do flow to Serica. In which case those benefits would have been considered in the acquisition price.

That economic date is however not to be found in any teneo document that I have seen.

I would strongly recommend that posters with doubts as to the work done by teneo , access companies house and do a search on Prax Exploration and Productiopn. ( it is free) Click on filing history and download the documents "Status of administrators proposals" and "Result of meeting of creditors". You will find a very detailed narrative of the process by which the administrators agreed to sell Prax UL to Serica. (57-59 pages)

They are very long documents so i will just repeat the following.

teneo Identified 8 potential strategic buyers for Prax UL and 6 potential financial buyers.

From this pool of potential buyers 6 bids were received which were analysed on the basis of financial and technical deliverability and acceptance by the authorities.

The list was shortened and 4 bids were received after some stages of negotiation and analysis.

Serica's bid was raised after some negotiation.

One bid that was higher than Serica was received but was rejected following doubts as to to its deliverability .

Teneo has not revealed the identities of the bidders owing to commercial considerations prior to the completion of the Serica purchase but has Intimated that it may do so after completion..

For those who claim that Prax UL was a steal I would suggest that of the 4 final bidders ,any one of them could have raised their bids had Prax UL been thought of as a steal. Multiple bidding rounds were organised by teneo

Finally as i am not a lawyer I have mixed feelings as to the backdating issue.

The sale contract to Serica was dated 29 September and completion ( when the price is paid) is expected by end December subject to approval by the authorities.

It can be argued that what will be approved is the sales contract dated S eptember 29 such that all revenues accruing to Prax UL on oil lifts after Sept 29 are the property of Serica . Bear in mind that the obligations of Prax E&P to the DCU holders from the sale proceeds come into effect when the sales proceeds are actually received.

Contrary to this it could be argued that title to Prax UL does not pass to Serica until the price is paid ( as for example with a house purchase.).

On that argument Prax UL remains the property of the administrators until the price is paid at completion ,and the revenue from the uplifts could be passed to Prax E&P and thereby form a potential payment to the DCUs

As we have not seen the actual sales agreement we do not know if this uncertainty was settled in the agreement. As I am not a lawyer I do not have the skill to answer the question.

I have no doubt that a "yes minister " scenario was played out on this ,but ofcourse the upstream price had to be lower than the estimated cash revenues of the well otherwise who who buy it and ofcourse the prospect of dead well has always been on the table.

But my contention is, that if a bonanza was truly anticipated there would have been competitive bidders approaching Teneo.

I look forward to finding out what the future oil lift figures are going to be .

But it is a dirty world both in business and in politics and you may be correct.

So now we wait for a few months to see if there is any money left for us and the longer the administration lasts the more fees Teneo will collect.

Senseman I have ,up to now supported your contributions on this mess but I do think that your suggestions of a conspiracy or untoward actions by the administrator a quite a stretch.

An administrators duties are primarily to run the company if at all possible to secure revenues to pay off the creditors and to assume the duties of a liquidator when it is clear that liquidation is the only practical course or the best course to assist the creditors.

The problems with the refinery were clearly the most serious both in terms of energy supplies to the Uk and ofcourse in respect of the employment issues. When a sale of the refinery did not appear to be possible ,closure was the best feasible option.

The seperation of Prax upstream from Prax E&P was essential as upstream was operating successfully and was profitable.Keeping them together would have meant that upstream revenues would have disappeared into E&Ps bottomless pit of debt.

As a profitable enterprise, a sale of upstream was again a reasonable strategy .I am not qualified to comment on the reasonableness of the price received,however if as you suggest the price was a steal for Serica ,I would suggest that there are plenty of North Sea operators who would have been glad to compete for a steal that Teneo would have contacted. Plus we should not forget that there always have been questions on the operating life of the Hurricane oil well.

I do not believe that we know of the exact terms of the Serica purchase agreement and whether the rumours of a backdate of the contract are true.

As I have posted earlier ,if they are true then the estimated future yield of the well after the backdate would have been factored by Serica into their price.

As to Teneo,I have been in contact with them and have found them to be very helpful and informative.

I would urge all DCU holders to contact Teneo to advise of their holdings and ensure that any information available from Teneo is directed to them.

Given the disgraceful management history of Hurricane Energy and the equally disgracefull management conduct of the Prax group it is entirely understandable that holders of the DCUs might be very suspicious of every thing that arises from this current mess.

However I for one am prepared to regard Teneo as playing with a straight bat and take some confidence from their statement that subject to unexpected developments they believe that a distribution to DCU holders in the future will be possible. That was a surprise to me.

I suspect however that even if a distribution is forthcoming it will be very small as the history of payments to unsecured creditors in these situations is woeful.

Certainly the person acting for DCU holders should be on top of Seneo to keep track of developments to ensure that best practice prevails.

I suspect that this one will go on for some months,given the complexity of the Prax Group.

The admin people (teneo) said that they would update us in April

Herminator

prax E&P is now being run by the administrators ( teneo)

I see no point in re-presenting your cheque as it will not be paid and you may just incur banking charges.

As you received a cheque , that suggests that you are a direct holder of prax DCUs with your personal details being recorded by the Prax registrar ( computershare) rather than you holding them through a nomineee shareholder like II or hargreaves etc.

Accordingly the administrators should already have your details on hand,but it would do no harm to email them with your details including the amount of your DCU holdings.

That should ensure that you are contacted by them if there is any further need for you to make a claim. It is unlikely that any further information re any DCU distributions will be made by Teneo before next April as a full acounting of all of the Prax group asserts and liabilities needs to be made.

I suggest that you keep in touch with this board to ensure that you are up to date with developments.

Corry

i agree

Corry we do not know the terms of the Serica deal but we do know that the sale amount will not be factored into any dcu calculation until the deal completes and the sale price is received. All that is still pending. Accordingly in my view ,until the sale completes and the price is received by Prax, the Prax Upstream revenues yet to be received.still belong to PraxE&P and form part of the D&C claim until legal ownership of Prax Upstream passes to Serica. It has been suggested that the Serica deal includes a backdating provision that would entitle Serica to all future uplift revenues. If that is correct then the sale price would have included Sericas estimate of the value of such uplifts. All ofcourse dependent on the deal going through.

No.... the administrators have not said that..The September payment that was due to the dcu holders is an unsecured debt owning to them by Prax E&P and comes under the admiistration process .It will therefore be paid in whole or more likely in part as part of any unsecured debts distribution when the administration is able to determine what percentage of unsecured debts can be paid if any. Later uplift amounts owed by Prax E&P to dcu holders should be treated in the same way until serica acquires legal ownership of prax upstream at which point the revenue is owned by serica and not prax E&P.

It was suggested by a previous poster that the serica transacation might be backdated prior to the administration.If that were so then in my view the expected revenues from later uplifts would have been factored into the sale price and therefore the dcu holders would be entitled to their share of the enhanced sale price..

All this is my personal assessment of the process and i would be happy to hear of any alternative assessment.

The administrators have said that going by the figures known at the point of administration they should be able to make a distribution to dcu holders,but the amount and timing is uncertain pending the final tally of assets and liabilities .

The dcu holders will be entitled to their share of all uplifts prior to completion of the serica purchase including the September payment plus a share of the amount received by prax from serica

The amount payable to dcu holders was capped by the terms of the Prax take over ,so I see 2 possibilities

If eg the payout is 50% to unsecured creditors ,then

1 The dcu payment and the cap are reduced by 50%

2 The dcu payment is reduced by 50% but the cap is unchanged,so if the 50% payment is large enough, the full amount of the cap might be reached.

FYO I The following received from the administrtaors (D Smith) by Email on October 9

I note you are not included on this list as an individual, but, as you have confirmed, you have invested via a third party nominee. The Company records do not contain the details of account holders where a nominee has been appointed. Nominees on the creditor list will have been sent correspondence from us on Monday 6 October. I can confirm that Barclays and Interactive Investors were noted on the Company books and records and will have received our formal notice of appointment issued on Monday. Please can you confirm any reference number you may hold in relation to the DCU held with nominees so that we can cross refer to the Company records.

Each creditor listed in the Company books and record has been given an individual log in to our creditor portal which contains information on the administration and facilitates the submission of claims. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide you with your nominee’s login details to the creditor portal for GDPR reasons. Your nominee has a responsibility to provide you with any updates in relation to the administration from correspondence issued by the administrators, in a timely manner and I would ask that you to contact them directly. Please note the Joint Administrators’ Proposals to creditors (issued on 6 October 2025) and subsequent updates (6 monthly intervals) are also filed at Companies House and are a matter of public record. If you wish to view any updates in relation to the administration yourself and not via your third party nominee, then we suggest using the ‘Follow this Company’ function via Companies House Beta online and subscribe to receive any updates in relation to the administration via Companies House.

In terms of your creditor status as a DCU holder, the administrators are not aware of any security being registered in respect of the DCUs and this does now mean that DCU holders are unsecured creditors in the administration. Any amounts due to DCU holders as at the date of administration (being 29 September 2025) will form part of each DCU holders’ unsecured claim. On present information, we anticipate that sufficient funds will be realised to enable a distribution to be made to unsecured creditors however, the anticipated dividend rate is uncertain at this stage of the administration due to the complexity of the claims we expect to receive. We anticipate that the claim process may take a number of months.

Further updates will be provided in our first progress report to creditors, which is expected to be issued by 26 April 2025.

To formally submit an unsecured claim in the administration, as you have invested via a third party nominee, it is their responsibility to submit the unsecured claim on your behalf. They can either submit a claim via the creditor portal, or can complete the proof of debt form provided to them and return it to us with supporting documentation to substantiate th

At this time, the administrators will not have any knowledge of individual DCU holders other than direct holders. The administrators will have details of the nominee holders and their bulk holdings.

Any payments re the DCUs will be paid to the nominees who will then distribute the funds to their clients .

Barclays are still asleep ....no corporate actions recorded....a kafcaesque aministration that internally does not know who is doing what.

I am on the verge of making a formal complaint to the regulator.

Once II or lloyds advise me that they have submitted their DCU claims to the administrator ,I shall tell barclays that if they do not get their admin in order andmiss any claims deadline they will receive blizzard of l;awsuits from customers.That might get their attention .

After this is all over i shall close all my accounts with barclays as this is not the first occasion that their admin has proved to be hopeless.

I have heard from Interactive investor and lloyds bank that they are in contact with the administrators.Nothing from barclays as yet.Not surpring as in y experience their admin is hopeless.They do not even show a corporate action yet on prax.

One further point that i came across today.

My understanding is that the preferential status of HMRC claims only applies to VAT debts and certain other debts relating to staff employement such as PAYE and NIC contributions.

The administration of Prax E&P is clearly a complex matter.

In my view ,if the joint and several obligation of PraxUL to HMRC was made proir to the deed poll date then it should not be in breach of the deed poll undertaking .If it was made after that date then that would be an actionable breach of the deed poll undertaking not to induce PraxUL to make take any action that would reduce its revenues.

The situation regarding further uplifts is complex as well. The Serica transaction is not completed until the consideration is paid.Any amount already paid by way of a deposit or advance payment may have entered Prax UL revenues for the date paid already. Funds received for uplifts prior to completion therefore do not belong to Serica.I am not legally qualified to state whether a backdate provision that deprives Prax UL of uplift revenues is legally sound but if sound then the expected uplift revenues will surely have formed part of the price Serica paid for Prax UL and that DCU holders are entitled to receive 17.5% of by way of the deed poll. So perhaps that issue is moot.

Detailed Information relating to the Prax administration and DCUs can be obtained by going to the Companies House website .

Search for prax exploration and production Limited (Prax E&P ) and click on filings.

A detailed explanation is provided by the administrator (Teneo) date October 6.

A short summary is as follows.

Teneo believe that there are sufficient assets in Prax E&P to satisfy 100% of the claims of "Preferred creditors".These creditors are staff wages and associated payments and HMRC.There appear to be no secured creditors although there are obligations to other companies in the prax group.

Teneo believes that there are sufficient assets in addition to pay a dividend to unsecured creditors which includes DCU holders , although it is too early in the administration to estimate an amount or timing of such a dividend. The obligations of Prax E&P are contained in the deed poll that the company signed when the DCUs were issued. Those obligations include 17.5% of the "Net Revenues" of Prax Upstream Ltd (Prax UL) which is currently operating outside of the administration . "Net Revenues" also includes the amount received by Prax E&P should it sell Prax UL. Prax UL has been sold by the administrators to Serica.

The sale is expected to complete in a few months subject to Govt approvals.

Should a further oil uplift from Lancaster occur prior to the Serica closing that should provide additional Net Revenue to Prax UL available for distribution to unsecured creditors including DCUs.NB That is my personal opinion.

Following an email exchange between me and the administrators I learned the following.

The administrators have written to the DCU holders registered with Computershare to obtain information regarding the scale of the DCU holders.

In the case of nominee holders that information does not include the breakdown holdings of the nominees as Computershare does not have such data .

Accordingly the administrators have written to the nominees to obtain the breakdown,and mention Interactrive Investors and Barclays bank but not Lloyds bank.

The administrators said that it was the responsibility of such nominees to file claims on behalf DCU holders and suggested that individual holders contact their fund managers (nominees) to request them to file claims on their behalf.

So there appears to be some hope that a DCU payment will be forthcoming,but only after some months . The administrators expect to update the progress of the administration on a 6 monthly basis.