Member Info for rossannan

Jim1556

I cannot speak for anyone else, but I am here solely to kick the tyres of BPC. If you think that any of the points that I have been making are not well founded, let’s have your counter arguments.

JBT2007

I am here to research BPC. It is this research that has thrown up the funding issue. To elaborate, the 25/3 RNS states:

“ Impact on Facility

As noted, under the terms of the Facility (as amended), the Company has access to additional funding in four committed tranches of convertible notes in each of April, May, June and July 2020. However, given the convertible structure of the Facility, the price at which shares may ultimately be issued should the Company draw on these future instalments is likely to be considerably less than the Company has previously considered appropriate, assuming the current share price of the Company were to continue to prevail at that time. Equally, to the extent that the Company's share price trades at a level below 2p for five consecutive days, the provider of the Facility has the option, should it so desire, to withdraw from the Facility or not meet any or all future draw-down requests.

As such, the Company has entered into discussion with the Bahamian family office that has provided the Facility, which has maintained its full support for the Company and the project . To this end the parties have agreed to keep the Facility on foot, and to replace the current draw down dates of April, may, June and July 2020 with draw down dates in November and December 2020 and January and February 2021 - i.e., with revised draw down dates better matched to the revised drilling schedule and funding needs. The parties have also agreed to further review the Facility terms and draw down schedule once the overall market impact of the coronavirus response is better understood). The Company will advise shareholders on any developments in relation to this matter as appropriate.”

We know that the 2p condition has been breached and as far as we are aware the Company’s discussions with the Family Office are yet to produce a definitive solution. So if I was an officer of the Company I would be slow to use the phrase “fully funded”.

JBT2007

Take the Family Office Facility. “Conditions to future draw-downs : if the Company's share price falls below 2 pence for five consecutive trading days [it did] there can be no further draw downs.” That condition still has to be waived by the Family Office. I await the RNS confirming that they have done so. Are officers of the company really using the phrase “fully funded”?

No, I am not a BPC shareholder.

Petrodollar

But there are clearly funding boxes to be ticked (such as conditions to be waived) before it can go ahead. Most folk on here seem to be overlooking this and assuming that the drill is fully funded when in fact the only unconditional funding is still basically the cash in the bank. Forget black swans - the ugly ducklings that are the Family Office Facility and the Conditional Convertible Notes are not even in a row yet.

J99MES/Thebhoys

Thanks for the £3,250,000, by the way. We will use it to grow a few more.

willec

But the funding is conditional, so it is arguably misleading to simply describe the well as fully funded. Until the conditions are waived or satisfied (as appropriate), how can drilling proceed?

Thebhoys

I think the detail is crucial here - how can the drill go ahead until the issues thrown up by delving into detail (the lack of unconditional funding) have been addressed?

Tiburn

The more I look at this the more it appears that Leo Koot had some nerve to pitch the former CERPers into a binary proposition that does not currently seem (and did not seem back in June) to be unconditionally funded for its big drill. First order of business surely has to be getting those conditions waived. Otherwise how can anything significant happen (even if Stena does farm in)?

Loz786

Do you mean their farm in (or not) decision? Because funding does still seem to be a significant issue. BPC need to see some progress on this (25/3 RNS):

“As noted, under the terms of the [Family Office] Facility (as amended), the Company has access to additional funding in four committed tranches of convertible notes in each of April, May, June and July 2020. However, given the convertible structure of the Facility, the price at which shares may ultimately be issued should the Company draw on these future instalments is likely to be considerably less than the Company has previously considered appropriate, assuming the current share price of the Company were to continue to prevail at that time. Equally, to the extent that the Company's share price trades at a level below 2p for five consecutive days, the provider of the Facility has the option, should it so desire, to withdraw from the Facility or not meet any or all future draw-down requests.

As such, the Company has entered into discussion with the Bahamian family office that has provided the Facility, which has maintained its full support for the Company and the project . To this end the parties have agreed to keep the Facility on foot, and to replace the current draw down dates of April, may, June and July 2020 with draw down dates in November and December 2020 and January and February 2021 - i.e., with revised draw down dates better matched to the revised drilling schedule and funding needs. The parties have also agreed to further review the Facility terms and draw down schedule once the overall market impact of the coronavirus response is better understood). The Company will advise shareholders on any developments in relation to this matter as appropriate.”

Have there been any such developments in relation to this matter? If not, BPC appear to remain unable to draw down the balance of the Family Office Facility.

Tiburn

Right now the curveball seems to be this paragraph in the 20/2 RNS about the Family Office Facility:

“Conditions to future draw- downs : if the Company's share price falls below 2 pence for five consecutive trading days, there can be no further draw downs; and no material adverse events subsisting at time of draw-down.“

Tiburn

None - it’s a few years since I had a position in CERP, long or short. Not sure I fancy BPC for the longer term - the drill is just too all or nothing for me - but I thought bigmj made a good point about liquidity so I can see the potential for trading any pre drill excitement. Just trying to get my head around the funding parameters first so that I am clear on the risk of a curveball from that direction. There’s been a useful discussion of funding on the ADVFN BBs, in amongst all the nonsense.

Petrodollar

One obstacle to CERP that, sadly too late now, looks to be about to be removed is the invidious Supplemental Petroleum Tax. If a certain election manifesto is to be believed, SPT is about to be significantly reformed.

Bigmj has made the good point that any former CERPers who are not up for heads or tails will have the opportunity to sell into any pre drill excitement and that the additional liquidity provided by the merger should facilitate any such sales.

Petrodollar

I would agree that anyone considering the merits of the BPC proposition (which you cannot deny is a binary proposition) has to look at BPC “as is” at the current share price. The points I was making to The bhoys were more about whether the former CERPers have been well served by Leo Koot. I think not.

Thebhoys

I don’t understand why you place so much faith in Leo Koot’s track record. It looks somewhat tarnished to me. He failed to deliver on what he outlined to the CERPers and instead of staying the course and doing the hard work to try to make CERP come right in the end, he has catapulted them into this essentially binary proposition. You could even argue that the way things were reorganised at CERP prior to Covid, let alone the merger, Leo Koot was already beginning to back away from the CERPers who had put so much faith in him.

You seem to trust Leo Koot’s judgement on BPC, but look at it this way: imagine that someone had come on the CERP BB prior to the merger in an attempt to sell the BPC story to the CERPers and that the CERPers had then done their own BPC research. What would they have concluded? I think you know that “Thanks but no thanks, I am happy where I am” would have been the politer end of the typical responses. But now all is well because Leo Koot says it is? And BPC is a radically different proposition because it has bolted on the former CERP assets? Not remotely - BPC was and is an essentially binary proposition. CERP was not a binary proposition, even if it sometimes felt like one because of the way Leo Koot ran it.

Do you really have no doubts? Are you intending to hold this through to the drill result, for good or for ill? I doubt that heads or tails is what most CERPers signed up for.

Starchild

And another thing. “Leo K was physically excited at the potential structures.” Leo K is easily excited, and history has shown that his excitement is often misplaced.

Starchild

I think you are misunderstanding how the majors work. If a small oil company makes a world class discovery they will certainly be interested. Until then they are happy to wait and more often than not watch the shareholders in such small companies take a beating. There was a lot of this “where are the majors?” chat around HUR, but even though there were substantial amounts of flowing oil, the majors were nowhere to be seen. They played a blinder there. The truth is that the majors understand risk far better than the shareholders in small oil companies, who end up taking the beatings so that the majors don’t have to.

CoMan

That is helpful, thank you.

Interesting post by Pro_2009 on one of the ADVFN BPC BBs implying that the still conditional nature of some of the funding may mean that BPC is not yet sufficiently (i.e. sufficiently unconditionally) funded for the drill to go ahead as currently planned. Unless my arithmetic is off they still appear to have sufficient unconditional funding to go ahead as currently planned. Not comfortably - anything but - they are clearly painting themselves into a totally binary corner, but the unconditional funding appears to be there. Do anyone else’s calculations tell them otherwise (either that the drill is not yet fully funded or that there is a bigger margin of safety than the one I am seeing)?

JBT2007

I think folk on here would be very interested in that percentage - we would all like a feel for the risk of Perseverance-1 turning out to be another Zoule-1 or Dore-1. Remember them?

JBT2007

No, I don’t know. What is the percentage?