Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
Bluefiesta,
The 11th cargo lift is happening now on block OML113 on the Adje field, so there probably will be an update in a day or two once the tanker moves off position, and hopefully an operations update at the same time.
If you go to www.marinetraffic.com and search for Front Puffin, then you can see a list of vessels close to the FPSO and the tanker Karvoulis, which is currently on site and stopped (0.3knots).
Once we see this motoring off at 6knots then we'll know the offloading has finished and news on the way.
I just wanted to add a few observations to the article written in Ukrainian on Friday by the journalist Igor Maskalevich.
The English translation was posted by Mills240 at 22.20 on Fri. although it can be hard to understand the sense of what's being said.
https://m.dt.ua/energy_market/delfin-tanci-na-hvosti-314544_.html
Having discussed it with my Ukrainian colleague, here's what he understands from it.
Bids were submitted for 4 companies.
The Ministry of Energy will spend 1 month studying them. One bid was 1100 pages long!
The Presidential administration wanted to extend the bid process for a further 60 days but they have no power to overrule the Ministry of Energy, so there will be no extension to the tender process and only the 4 contenders will be considered.
The tender and information process was in Ukrainian only, so International companies didn’t have the time to respond with bids within the 2 month timeframe, which was the main complaint of the Presidential Administration.
Both Socar and Trident could do the job and appear to be the strongest candidates. Trident plan to produce within 3.5 years and have a rig available in Romania that could be brought down. Ponymarev’s company looks to be in the strongest position on the face of it.
One problem is that the block is surrounded by 2 other blocks that have been siezed by Russia and were previously producing gas for Ukraine with 5BCM reserves.
A bit risky therefore to be offering to put in a lot of funds into this venture.
So one month for a decision on the winning candidate then up to a further 2 months for review with the winning bid made public by Sept 12 at the latest.
The Ukrainian journalist drily described the bid process as the usual format for business in the Ukraine, and titled his article as ‘for such people as’ - meaning that it usually favours those with the right connections.
As usual, more questions than answers when it comes to Frontera's involvement and their chances of a successful bid.
After reading Judge Seeborg's verdict on Order denying motion for Preliminary Injunction
https://www.leagle.com/decision/infdco20190610b51
and paragraph 2 of section III A.(Likelihood of success on the merits), I would have thought that the case for jury trial pressing for damages (caused by the defendant being mastermind of alleged harm to the company) might be weakened by the ability of Frontera to somehow be able to stump up 56 million USD as the minimum required reserve for this bid tender.
Thanks for posting Mills240. I'll show it to my Ukrainian colleague later tonight and see if we can read between the lines a bit. He did say that the general perception of Frontera in Ukraine is that they haven't done anything useful in Georgia and the new President would be wise to avoid any whiff of corruption by fast tracking them into winning the bid. Also the Oligarch Kolomoisky is regarded as the new President's mentor. My colleague thought that the levels of corruption in Ukraine were at their worst during the previous president Poroshenko's regime (even worse than Yanukovich and Kuchma), when the tender bid was being proposed.
So in Kiev today, the Head of the Presidential Administration, Andriy Bohdan, called for the continuation of a tender to conclude production sharing agreements for the Dolphin field on the Black Sea shelf for at least 120 days. This is stated in the letter of the Head of the Presidential Administration to the Cabinet of Ministers. The tender began on April 12th. The government reduced the deadline to 60 days, so it pops up on June 12th. “Given the scale of the site, the area of which is more than 9.4 thousand square kilometres, and the complexity of such a project, Ukraine needs to attract foreign gas companies with practical experience on the shelf, as well as with the appropriate technical and financial support”, the letter says.
Extending the term of the tender will increase the number of international participating companies and increase the transparency of the evaluation of their bids. On June 12, at least two foreign companies will apply for the tender. The first is the American firm Frontera Resources. The second is the American investment fund Trident Acquisitions, according to a source in the Ministry of Energy. Journalists have found out that Frontera Resources may be entitled to develop and produce hydrocarbons in one of the largest Dolphin gas fields in the Black Sea. The company has dubious gas production projects in Georgia and Moldova, the financial report for 2018 indicates its unprofitability.
Looking at Trident Acquisitions web site, with one director Ilya Ponomarev an ex-Schlumberger marketing manager and ex-Russian MP, now Ukrainian citizen, it would appear that they are a blank cheque company with 200 million USD in the coffers available to invest. And as of tomorrow, new share options and warrants can be traded on NASDAQ. Their main area of interest is western Ukraine and the Black Sea shelf:
https://tridentacquisitions.com/eastern-europe
The Dolphin field takes up a significant chunk of the prime acreage on offer.
The terms of the bid tender can be found at
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6324c924-8ac1-4a60-a9f1-a8680e004f53
With only Trident and Frontera having bid in time so far, if the Cabinet don’t agree to extending the deadline, then it seems likely that Frontera would win, based on the points based criteria for previous experience.
Currently if no extension, then the winner will be announced on Sept 12th 2019.
So Frontera spent 11,200 USD on the application and had to have a minimum investment requirement of 56 million USD.
This figure sounds vaguely familiar – where were they expecting to find that from?
So nothing happening in the Cayman Court next week it seems...
Justice Kawaley is working Mon & Tues then taking the rest of the week off.
Nothing unusual about that, given that Monday June 10th is a holiday in the Caymans, so perhaps he's off scuba diving somewhere nice.
Except last week. in the cause list beginning 27th May, he devoted a day during the week to swotting up on injunction procedures and other financial legal issues.
Is it possible he could be travelling to California on Wed for a possible hearing on Thurs?
His knowledge of the case so far would be extremely relevant.
Otherwise why bother doing that research last week?
It's not like his other cases appear particularly complex.
The Cause Lists for previous weeks have all been conveniently deleted from the Cayman Court website, which is a new thing.
Yep, my buy at 09.35 for 119177 is showing as a sell.
Well I just bought another 119177 shares this morning...got tired of waiting for FRR to get resolved, so time to make the most of this year's ISA allowance. I can see BLOE making significant gains in the next couple of months for sure.
Not sure if this has already been posted, but interesting to read with reference to ExxonMobil.
This article was written on Nov 6th, so if details on EM's possible involvement with the refinery cannot be disclosed for 2 months, then I guess it will be published sometime early in January.
If there is a JV/FO in Block12, then it makes sense for them to be investing in a refinery.
http://cbw.ge/business/sprc-on-the-global-petrochemical-map/
Exxon Mobil, VA Tech Wabag, and Schneider Electrics declared interest towards this complex.
Supsa Refining-Petrochemicals Complex (SRPC) within 4 years, will invest up to 3 BLN USD for the start up of a refinery and petrochemical complex designed to Euro 5+ emission standards in Supsa, Georgia. The facility will process 5 million tons of raw materials per annum, making oil and petrochemical exports from Georgia on a global scale.
SRPC has already become the member of the Global Refining and Petrochemical Industry. GBC (Global Business Club) has placed SRPC on the Global Refining-Petrochemicals Map and highlighted it as one of the major projects in the region.
Within the frames of Downstream Project Management Conference in Frankfurt, important meetings with the main players in the Petrochemical Market were conducted.
Caucasian Business Week interviewed CEO Mr. Lasha Koridze regarding the SRPC’s further development.
How did you appear on this map and how important is this for Georgia?
It is very important that our company was well received by the global Petrochemical family. You know that Georgia is 100% dependent on imported oil products and our complex gives our country the chance to become a net exporter of oil products.
At the Downstream Project Management Conference we had meetings with international companies such as: Exxon Mobil Corporation, VA Tech Wabag and Schneider Electrics. They expressed a great interest towards SRPC and stand ready to be part of the project. However, before the BFS is finalized, any details of such cooperation cannot be disclosed. The final BFS document will be ready in 2 months.
Meanwhile, things are hotting up in the Caspian Sea region, with a JV announced yesterday between SOCAR and BGP - so the Chinese are moving in fast. Our 2 interested majors better get a move on!
https://www.azernews.az/oil_and_gas/138525.html
Dulwichman,
I was watching RT News after the Nato meeting and a press conference with Donald Trump. Something that was missed out on the BBC news - a journalist introduced herself as being from Georgia and asked Trump about any discussions that had taken place concerning Georgia. Trump said that Georgia had given a very favourable impression at the conference and come across very well, although he wouldn't be drawn any further. At least it shows that he was involved or at least listening to the Georgians.
Difficult to know if avoiding any discussion about Georgia in Helsinki today was a good thing or not!
I'm still holding and patiently waiting for the next news from FRR though.
I rarely post, but still invested in FRR since 2014, primarily because of the gas. I had to cancel my trip to the recent SH meeting on May 9th as I ended up working offshore West Africa instead. Last autumn I worked for ExxonMobil offshore Guyana, and during that job had a VIP visit from the Houston based head of exploration worldwide. We had a chat and he said that for EM, the $4.4 billion Liza field phase 1 & 2 development was their biggest project of the year. For 2018�s budget they needed to increase their reserves portfolio and were on the lookout for prospects with large undiscovered reserves in countries with low geo-political risk. He told me that EM would have loved to invest fully in Mexico, given the high potential in the GOM and proximity to US markets, but they simply could not take the risk of having to deal with the cartels. So the difficulty for him was finding suitable places in the world where their investment wasn�t at risk to bribery, extortion, kidnapping, terrorism or pipelines being blown up. I suspect that if someone was to offer 202TCF of gas resources onshore in a country with very low geo-political risk, then he would have bitten their hand off! Sadly it wasn�t the right professional setting to tell him about my FRR investment! Back in November at the SH meeting in London, Zaza talked about being in joint venture discussions with an interested party that was a �household name� with offices in Aberdeen and London. At the time we thought that it might have been BP, but actually EM has offices there too. I suppose the geo-political risk for anyone looking to invest in Georgia would be TANAP on June 12th, and whether or not the southern gas pipeline goes ahead without any last minute hitches. Interesting times coming up this month!