Member Info for Serif

@Yanis. Am broadly aligned with your post - suspect the window was closing - or at least that was the negotiating ploy that worked, I just hope this is one of the projects Simon has been studying for months so that he really knows the risks inside out. It could be a massive opportunity once we churn through the close to 400m shares, but I don’t think we should underestimate the drag effect that increasing the float will have over the short to medium term.

We also need to be careful when talking about bopd - this is only an appraisal well, unlike Wressle we will not be producing any oil at this stage - that is presumably a couple of years away and possibly a couple more placing away - if it all goes well. In Simon’s view we are swapping slow certain growth (Wressle income against old share float) for “low risk” high growth potential (against enlarged share float). It all comes down to how well he has assessed the risk and in the end a bit of good or bad luck with the actual drill.

Thanks Tovov. His best interview yet in terms of fluency and natural grasp of the detail (if only he could raise his camera to eye level!). Positive words around our potential farm outs “increasingly more in Morocco”. Shame we had to go for such dilution now and couldn’t get one of them over the line first. Serenity will now just have to deliver that much more in return to justify the dilution on our other projects. But now he has 6 months to prove himself hero or villain, so not too long to wait - if this of course stays on timetable and doesn’t slip as Wressle has endlessly.

Yanis where are you seeing that pl?

@VL - hope so, we would probably only need a trading volume of 600m to achieve that if most PIs hold onto their allocations.

I think to go for a crude placing for the lot is just lazy when we have Wressle asset producing - I would have liked to see evidence of SO straining every sinew to find ways to reduce this impact.

Enough - turning to look forward. Phoebus do you have any handle on probability of this drill happening in the timescales given? Thinking that these O&G projects always seem to slip for some reason or other. Are there any obvious threats to timetable? Do you know if it still depends on signing up other partners?

I don’t understand the point of having strong profit from Wressle and money sitting in reserve if not then to use it to minimise the scale of any dilution - yet we seem to be going for the full £7m and at least 400m extra shares (we don’t know yet they may go for more if there is the demand - see rns). SO does not seem to be able to take a shareholder perspective - which is why PIs generally like companies run by people with large shareholdings themselves.

There is 400m odd shares to have a word with your re rate first! Look it may turn out to be the best thing EOG ever did, but with world developments there looked like a real possibility that with Wressle and the Wressle follow ups, Morocco and in particular Ireland the company maker was there for us without every current shareholder having the value of their holding effectively halved by dilution and with the additional risk that this, like any oil project, just may not work.

Are you now suggesting that the placing price was ridiculously cheap after all?

Phoebus - I am impressed by your optimism and maybe by Monday it will feel different. But it’s the scale of dilution that gets me - has Wressle income so far meant nothing? Why are they trying to raise the full £7m rather than fund some from current income? 400m more shares takes us close to 1 billion! The only small consolation I can see today is that SO has thrown away for now the chance to earn his share options, at least until this placing has been churned!

If you put the price low enough anyone could raise against Wressle - it’s not impressive. Anyone worked out the likely number of shares that we will be churning through from our new city “investors” at 2p for the next few weeks? It looks like a very large percentage dilution to me that will slow us down for quite some time unless the drill happens on time and is a clear success.

Don’t agree about Ireland prospects. If it was a Gov refusal they could simply tell us. We are all expecting a renewed focus on finding non-Russian gas supplies, no surprise then that DNO want it back quickly before Ireland potential move things on.

@Yanis. You’re right. The Irish licences don’t actually seemed to factored into the SP yet and anyway I doubt anyone could have put a meaningful value on the Edge licence on top of Inishkea licence - what would that be “a massive increase on top of a massive increase”! Yes of course it would have been ideal to hold all the cards, but if any come into play they all do IMO. Quite why SO didn’t add a comment such as “it’s a shame but shows the growing interest” - which every man and their dog can work out, is beyond me. They seem happy to tell us on their Twitter feed that drilling involves making a hole in the ground - maybe they could still comment. I do expect a CEO to put things in context for people.

Original submission not RNSd, just referred to in Shareholder letter rns on 1st July 2019 - so perhaps not seen as significant enough in itself - whatever we may choose to read into it!

Might also explain the otherwise rather arrogant “right man for the job” picture on Europa Twitter on 15th Feb, followed up by an otherwise apparently random picture of an oil rig in the Irish Sea. Perhaps he’s an old fan of the Beatles and will communicate news to his shareholders “through his music”.

Right now I can’t think of a better alternative explanation - but if so that would be huge news for us - so staying cautious for now - anyone got any alternative explanations?

OK something must be happening. Why else would you withdraw this application after so many years just as things start to look interesting again? No idea what’s actually going on mind you!

@Tacuma - would DNO be in the farmin market? They had farmed out originally to CNNOC who then withdrew in face of Irish intransigence. I was hoping we might now get interest from some of the big International players looking to rebalance portfolios after giving up so much of their Russian based gas assets.

You may well be right and he is presuming everyone is drawing the “obvious conclusion”. But then tbh he hasn’t said anything about the EOG specific assets since last August and I think that if he is “the man for the job” as the EOG Twitter recently boasted, it’s about time he told us a bit about what he has achieved in pushing forward these assets.

Yes it’s a shame that Ryan never signed the permit to allow the exchange to happen, but there is only one reason why DNO want Edge back and that’s the strongest indication yet that Ireland is expected to give the go ahead for Corrib supply extension. Inishkea should be a big enough pay off for EOG.

The drop just took off yesterdays gains, so back to Friday closing price - and the whole market looks jittery at the moment (not surprisingly). But if you’re invested in anything oil and gas is the best bet at the moment. Prices very volatile but Brent up 8% today atm. With the OP rise and the Pound weakening against the Dollar it’s making a nonsense of estimates of Wressle profitability based on $80 oil - just now we are probably getting something close to a 40% uplift on this.