Member Info for skittish

"Skittish has - quite literally - asked you all to believe that the government of the PRC is paying me to post on this board"

Now you are simply making this up.

Never said anything of the sort.

What I said was - "Of course there are trolls and trolls, organised and disorganised but the sustained attack over recent months could be of advantage to a predator who was interested in frying really big fish, and had spied a little shrimp basking on a superbly positioned little rock."

I hope you'll pay a little more attention in future.

Goodnight.

Curious has done 256 posts on LSE over two years, every single one on Anglo, none on any other share, and every single one knocking Anglo.

Altruism at its purest.

If it walks like a troll, quacks like a troll, then...reach your own conclusions.

There is an old Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times".

I suspect though that interesting times are likely to be a benefit to Anglo.

Russia via Lukoil is buying up Congolese assets courtesy of New Age and likely building an oil pipeline from Pointe Noire to Brazzaville. China looks like it is buying up assets throughout Africa, some via New Age. Congo and many other African countries owe huge debts to China and to a lesser extent Russia, and allowing state companies access to resources is one way of paying off those debts.

reuters.com/article/us-congorepublic-imf/imf-approves-congo-republic-bailout-after-china-debt-deal-idUSKCN1U62NR

So there are big forces at play here.

The CNOOC/New Age deal is part of a bigger picture. The gas produced from the Marine XII/Lukoil deal is all sold to China.

http://www.energyintel.com/pages/articlesummary/1008334/cnooc--newage-reach-african-lng-supply-deal-

So it is all very incestuous.

Of interest also is the New Age website, which appears to have been updated (coincidentally) today.

Gone are the references to Marine XII and more detail is given regarding Marine III - 66% oil, 34% gas, 3D seismic concluded in 2019 (I wonder if they got a bit of Tilapia in as well), and a firm exploration/appraisal well planned for Q1 2020.

http://www.newafricanglobalenergy.com/congo-brazzaville/

Here New Age describes Marine III as "low risk appraisal" - no talk of exploration or wildcat - it is as if they already know the oil is there.

http://www.newafricanglobalenergy.com/our-portfolio/

And the talk of drilling Q1 2020, that ain't far away at all, and really is almost at the same time as TLP-103ST which is planned for Q4 2019. New Age's previous comments about drilling were just "sometime" in 2020.

i won't bang on again (much) about how valuable our Tilapia site is. Take out our licence area, the rain forest and the animal sanctuary and there aren't many places along the coast you could place large oil/gas infrastructure. Apart from where Anglo is located, of course.

And, if you were thinking that is a nice bit of real estate which could come in handy and it was occupied by a small LSE AIM company, it may be in your interest to just keep bashing away at that share price and undermine the company and its Board.

Of course there are trolls and trolls, organised and disorganised but the sustained attack over recent months could be of advantage to a predator who was interested in frying really big fish, and had spied a little shrimp basking on a superbly positioned little rock.

Much going on here, mostly behind the scenes.

Whilst drilling TLP-103ST is of course important, I suspect the real action is presently taking place in London and Brazzaville, Moscow and Beijing.

We do indeed live in interesting times.

Could be a big sell coming but Africa Intelligence is reporting that the Chinese are about to buy New Age

Hi Tiptop, gmcc, evens etc (sorry if you're in the etc....)

Great find gmcc, although I'm sure some will be saying that we are still paying for the SMP-102 rig even when it is being used by someone else. Just goes to show a little knowledge is dangerous, or at least can create the appearance of danger. After all, most of us knew that the rig had long since left Tilapia.

As for New Age buying us out I'm expecting something that is a little more subtle and more value enhancing to AAOG long term.

Everyone has their price, but at present Miton own 20% of the shares, Riverfort 13% and Yorkville 13%, making a total of 46%. Riverfort and Yorkville may have by now sold down a couple of % though. As the Chairman of Anglo is proxy for Riverforts' and Yorkville's shares I cannot see any hostile (or otherwise) buyout being successful, as these three control almost 50% of the shares.

But yes, our acreage would be particularly attractive to New Age.

These are their "leads" in Marine III.

https://ibb.co/B4TxtzC

Importantly, they expect to target the same reservoirs on Marine III they targeted on Marine XII, so it will be the Djeno they go for.

https://www.energy-pedia.com/news/congo-brazzaville/newage-sells-interest-in-marine-xii-licence-to-lukoil-176829

Also, if New Age are doing seismic there would be nothing to prevent them doing it over our licence area - if only to get a better understanding of what lies beneath their licence area. It would be interesting if they swapped their seismic for our drilling data.

At the risk of doing it to death this is how I believe the New Age plays link-in with Anglo and the Chinese drilling to the east.

https://ibb.co/GHVNVZM

The Chinese drilled 8 wells just to the east of us between April 2017 and November 2018. Wells N2, BN, N, C, E, S2, and S3 still retain some equipment on them. It is unlikely they would continue drilling if one well after another was a duster. They were hitting something.

The Chinese licence is only exploration and appraisal. But this is a close up of N taken in December 2018. There is clearly a tank, which holds around 700 barrels, and pipework there. The tank is emptied on a regular basis as shown by the tyre marks. There is also a flare, just out of shot.

https://ibb.co/qFPCCZg

This is S2 - quite a bit of pipework here, so something was going on, but now sealed awaiting reentry?

https://ibb.co/4KYzQ0z

For reference this is Tilapia, at a similar magnification, and we know that we are producing (modestly) and the equipment is capable of much more.

https://ibb.co/zstRHd2

Continued/

Continued/

Well S3 is near the hamlet of Mpili which consists of around a dozen houses. Mpili was the site of a blow out in 2013 when a well "unexpectedly" discovered oil. The depth suggested that this was free flowing (too free flowing) oil from the R zones. The site of the blowout must be at or adjacent to S3. And no wonder they want "professional" operators rather then cowboys.

https://www.snpc-group.com/en/snpc-controls-eruption-oil-well-zk182

So, there is plenty of evidence to suggest the Chinese discovered possibly significant quantities of oil immediately to the east of us. They are presumably awaiting a production licence and are presently concentrating on their Banga Kayo field around 30km to the south where they presently have at least five (five!) rigs in operation - and have drilled dozens and dozens of wells to boost production to 50,000bpd.

A section of Banga Kayo from August 2019.

https://ibb.co/gm6x81s

So Djeno leads to our immediate west, Chinese oil to our immediate east.

I won't air here my views on New Age using our pad to target their Djeno leads, the advantages are obvious, the costs about a third of shallow offshore drilling - I've done that already.

But part of the importance of the sale of 25% of Marine XII for $800M is that it was at a significant undervalue. The value of that 25% was actually around $1.26Bn!

https://www.oilfieldtechnology.com/offshore-and-subsea/10062019/wood-mackenzie-comments-on-lukoils-marine-xii-move/

Drilling onshore would not only be much cheaper it would increase the value of any fields which are located, as development costs would be slashed.

New Age actually had to sell Marine XII as it was heavily in debt, and being crushed by creditors. If you look through the recent history of New Age throughout 2017/2018 there were repeated boardroom bust ups over strategy. David Stoopin resigned several times and was reinstated and Steven Lowden Founder and CEO of New Age was eventually booted out in 2018. David Stoopin's victory appears to have led to the sale of Marine XII, and he finally stepped down in July 2019, following the sealing of the deal, which has now completed, and is now looking for executive and non-executive roles....

It is also important to note that the Marine XII deal was sealed at the very highest levels, so clearly New Age have significant access in the Corridors of Power. These talks took place just two weeks before the New Age-Lukoil deal was announced.

http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/60575

continued/

Continued/

But we do presently lack some news. The ISA parties are selling significant amounts which are only bought by PI's as the price continually reduces. I see that as a short term technical issue. If say New Age were to buy a stake in Anglo directly from the ISA parties, say 10%, that would mean no ISA shares for around 4 months. That alone would be enough to see a significant increase in the share price from these lows, as the continual flow of new shares would cease.

And any New Age involvement would also give Anglo a seat at the top table.

And we do have things that they would seriously desire, like a land based drilling site.

I think at this juncture literally anything could happen, but I feel that anyone short (or out) could be caught out by any number of possible scenarios.

And David Stoopin is still looking for a suitable job.

Just looking at thetab.com website.

https://thetab.com/

i seem to think there is more advertising on there than there was a few weeks ago. Maybe the "Iconic effect"?

One of the advertisers particularly caught my attention.

https://www.tallymoney.com/gettally

"Get Tally today and become one of the first Tally account holders"

Tally went live on 10th June 2019.

WDC RNS relating to UK based financial services business 3rd June 2019.

UK based fintech?

JQ mentioned in the last ProActive interview he was on his way to the unnamed UK based fintech after the ProActive interview - Tally's HQ is 1.3 miles from the ProActive studio's - present journey time by car 9 minutes.

Suitable candidate?

Not seen them advertising anywhere else. Indeed never actually heard of them before.

Tiburn, yes I'll have a think about that.

I'm sure the local geography is not lost on JB (or New Age for that matter - the crew of their survey ship must have enviously eyed our coastal set up as they cruised around doing seismic).

I suspect JB is playing everything with a very straight bat - that was the impression I got from the interims - everything worded with an abundance of caution.

As an aside, I've been looking at the Wing Wah Kayo Banga field which is about 15km SE of Pointe Noire, so about 30km SSE of us. They were drilling like mad in May 2019, with what looks like 4 rigs going at the same time. The field has expanded quite a lot in just the last 6 months.

This was it in May 2019.

https://ibb.co/TRVpY7Z

I did go to the Ford showroom this afternoon, but unfortunately Mrs Skittish thinks Ford is spelled P-O-R-S-C-H-E.

Agreed on the matter of the rig, SMP-102 has always been shown as being in Gabon, someone pointed this out months ago, whereas we now know it was still at Tilapia.

It is also obvious it is no longer at Tilapia and was taken back by SMP , together with all the rest of their equipment, when they briefly seized the field in mid July. The satellite image shows this to be true.

But I also agree with Greg Green that it is somewhat unusual that AAOG are still talking about one of two rigs for a November drill (with scouting around for a third) when we are almost in October already - more on that later.

Greg also mentions (as has been mentioned before) transporting the rig by canal.

I do think we need a bit of reset here - this is Africa. There are no canals.

There is transport along parts of the Congo River, but that is nowhere near us.

In Congo, there is one single track narrow gauge railway Pointe Noire to Brazzaville - with a passenger train every other day - 300 miles in 16 hours. In Congo, the Air Force has no planes, the Navy no ships.

There are a few new roads, built almost certainly by the Chinese, one of which, the N5 runs within 1km of Tilapia - so when we get a rig it will come by road.

So, JB appears to be hedging, a little - on the matter of rigs.

There also appears to be a little hedging on the topside upgrades. On 5th August AAOG said "In parallel (with drilling) limited but necessary upgrades (to the topside) will be carried out". On 27th August they said - "Depending on the flow rate some enhancements to topside infrastructure will be required" - which sounds more sequential than parallel ie see what the flow rate is then do the upgrade.

So why the hedging about, when we are meant to be drilling in a little over 5 weeks?

Well I'll speculate.

We are looking for a new Non-Executive Chairman. Could be anybody. But some Africa, maybe even Congo experience would be nice, London located even better, big hitter - icing on the cake, well known to Congo government - we've hit the jackpot.

David Stoopin would fit the bill

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-stoopin-6b376239/

and he just happens to be looking for a job.

He's the former CEO at New Age, who just happened to leave around mid July 2019, having done the Marine XII deal with Lukoil. Mid July, as if anyone needed reminding was when DS became the story, and they've probably been looking for a new NEC for AAOG since then.

Which leads me onto another one of my hobby horses - that being our geographical location.

At the risk of boring people, this is where we are

https://ibb.co/GHVNVZM

New Age leads to the west, Chinese drilling pads to the east. New Age is due to drill one of their leads on Marine III in 2020.

For the avoidance of doubt this is where New Age say their leads are

https://ibb.co/B4TxtzC

Continued/

Continued/

Now all their leads on Marine III, adjacent to Tilapia, in their entirety are within 12km of our pad at Tilapia.

Present horizontal drilling technology can reach 12km (I think the longest actual well is presently 11.2km), and new technology should extend that to 20km.

https://www.quora.com/How-far-can-you-drill-using-horizontal-drilling-technology

New Age recently spent $55M drilling two wells in Cameroon

https://africaoilandpower.com/2018/10/19/new-age-strikes-gas-oil-in-cameroon/

so a single offshore well would come in at around $30M.

If we agreed to let them use our pad they could do the same thing for around $10M.

I first suggested this possibility in June, but the more I research it the more obvious a solution it becomes.

In fact New Age Marine III leads are pretty close to the existing Banga field

https://ibb.co/2FRBtXf

which raises the possibility that any pipeline would not be built across land to the Djeno Oil Export Terminal, but built out to sea lining up with existing pipelines that run to Djeno

https://ibb.co/KxBc15B

To me some sort of link with New Age, whether it be strategic agreement, JV, joint field development, or just sharing a land based rig and we get cash for use of our facilities makes obvious sense.

If David Stoopin were to be our new NEC then that would make it a marriage made in heaven.

And if New Age and Anglo African built some fancy facilities at Tilapia, then the Chinese could use them as well, as the Tropical Rain Forest and Chimp Sanctuary sort of cramps their style a bit.

If, as appears to be the case JB is hedging a bit on the rigs and topside, then that could be because his actual preferred route involves New Age, and the two rigs and limited topside enhancements are actually his fall back position.

New Age would be a whole new ball game involving better rigs, more equipment and much more topside.

All speculation of course.

Off to my local Ford dealer now to look at some cheap cars.

Now that they seem to have established the principle that Iconic Labs plc is not liable for the debts of the Widecells subsidiaries by virtue of putting Widecells Limited into liquidation and having a liquidator appointed

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08202804/filing-history

they now seem to be moving with some haste to start to wind up the remaining subsidiaries by filing various notices (all within the last few days) -

Widecells International Limited

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08150010/filing-history

WideAcademy Limited

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09963544/filing-history

Cell Plan Limited

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09962594/filing-history

It looks like Regan and Vincent are in charge of winding up the legacy businesses (at no cost to Iconic Labs plc, if possible) whilst Quinlan and Harrington are dealing with drumming up new business.

Regan and Vincent have also set up Student Media Ventures in which Iconic Labs plc has a 24% stake -

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/12192040/officers

Iconic Labs plc now also own 100% Social Alchemy Limited (although details not yet changed at Companies House), 100% of the intellectual property of GayStarNews Limited, and 24% of Medium Channel Media Limited which is buying 100% of thetab.com.

Tab Media Limited today filed 2018 year end accounts

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08125470/filing-history

which confirm that the purchase by Medium Channel Media Limited is intended to be completed by 30th November 2019.

Nice little set up, valued effectively at zilch.

Found it now - earlier this morning - but pretty significant news I'd say - limiting Iconic's liabilities.

I didn't find this - someone hinted at it a few days ago (but can't find the post now),

Widecells Limited

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08202804/filing-history

Statement of Affairs filed on 20th September 2019 shows total debts of £1473K of which £1203K owed to Iconic.

As the company is being wound up and a liquidator has been appointed then the debts are being written off.

There is a deficit but as it is being wound up clearly Iconic Labs plc are not liable for the debts of £270K, being the balance after deducting the £1203K owed to Iconic itself.

So Iconic saves £270K in potential liabilities, and maybe has another £1203K to write off against tax on future profits.

Presumably Iconic have won the argument on not being liable for these debts.

More liquidations to follow?

More housekeeping....

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09963544/filing-history

I can tell you that Mrs Skittish has been most impressed with my recent posts and images.

So much so that she has now decided that all this month's housekeeping money should be invested in AAOG shares without delay.

She says "beans on toast" for a few weeks will do me no harm, and is all part of "healthy eating" and an "active lifestyle", which apparently is suddenly lacking in my current habits.

She says she'll be eating "out" with "friends".

Whilst we are all awaiting news I thought I'd re-post this, which features our intrepid aeronaut, Jeremie Lecocq

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUDO5dL6vmw

Long suffering old timers will have seen it before, but newbies may be interested and it brings some life to the image from yesterday

https://ibb.co/GHVNVZM

Takeoff is from a point half way between Tilapia and the Chinese Fish Processing Plant and we have at

1.31 Chinese Communications Facility
1.57 Chinese Fish Processing Plant
2.15 TILAPIA showing TLP-103C being drilled
2.33 Bas Kouilou and Kouilou River (after which Petro Kouilou was named)
2.50 Madingo Kayes
3.33 Tilapia again
4.30 Dodgy attempt at landing
5.16 Hairy landing - on second attempt

Keen observers will note rain forest everywhere (especially in the Chinese licence area - which also contains a large animal sanctuary) which makes Tilapia and our block - which are located in neither - a particularly sweet spot in which to locate large scale oil type equipment.

irishmouse and Tiptop, Unfortunately the satellites have not been very co-operative recently.

The last decent image of the site was on 12th September and hinted at some possible disturbance in the vicinity of TLP-103. - but it is difficult to say for sure.

Small vehicles wouldn't show at the resolution of the "free" daily imagery, you'd need something more container sized to show up clearly. Certainly between 3rd August, by which time the original (presumably SMP) containers had disappeared and 12th September, nothing new of significance had appeared on site.

Of course it is possible that equipment had arrived and then left between these dates, and you wouldn't be able to tell without access to the better imagery which does appear from time to time, albeit in an unpredictable manner.

By way of poor compensation I give you my latest sketch using Google Earth, this time from an oblique angle.

https://ibb.co/GHVNVZM

to me it illustrates how close we (meaning AAOG, New Age and Wing Wah) all are to each other. We're almost all sitting on top of each other with Tilapia right in the middle - the sweetest of sweet spots.

To me that is all you need to know when deciding to buy shares in AAOG.

New Age completed the sale of Marine XII last week, some of that $800M will flow towards Marine III.

I can hardly wait for drilling to commence there, and they will go straight for the Djeno.

The Interim Report is due to be published next week.

In 2018 it was issued on 28th September, in 2017 on 26th September.

I'm thinking this year the tone will be much "dryer" than in previous reports, but it will, I'm sure, address many of the outstanding issues on which we are awaiting news.

I suspect that the whole PR machine is being rejigged, into one where there is very little PR, and the oil will do all the talking that is necessary.

Acquisition of GayStarNews moving apace -

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11685755/filing-history

Coordinates for Tilapia are

4 degrees 31' 50.95" S
11 degrees 46' 12.55" E

Easier to type in Pointe Noire and then trace the coast north for about 17km, you can't miss Tilapia.

Google Earth is good and shows some images from 2019, Zoom Maps very detailed but slightly older images, useful for studying the history of drilling in the area, Maxar Technologies shows fairly new images but at lower resolution.

For more recent higher resolution images you will need to be a little more imaginative!

I've copied quite a few of the images onto an ibb page so you can view those at your leisure

https://skittish.imgbb.com/

The recent history of the area is interesting.

Tilapia appears to have had three phases of drilling - mid 1990's using floating rigs, 2005 - 2007 using land based drilling and 2018 to present. The earlier two sets of explorations appear to have been brought to a halt by low oil prices, and lack of finance.

The locality appears to have been fairly dormant between 2007 to 2013 but then wells E3, E4 and E5 were drilled around mid 2013 to mid 2014, not sure by whom, which coincided with an expansion of the oil mud (and other waste) site to the SE of Tilapia.

Another well close to the site of S3 was also drilled in 2013. This seems to have been just for geological test purposes but unfortunately they hit oil and had a blow out. It appears to have made a right mess of the area and taken some time to control.

We don't know the precise results of drilling E3, E4 and E5, but by mid 2015 the investors in what would become AAOG had decided to invest in Tilapia. So it is reasonable to assume that Tilapia was put on the market around mid 2014, maybe made more attractive by the results from E3, E4 and E5?

2015 also appears to be around the time the Chinese obtained their licence and by early 2017 they were building pads ready for drilling.

i also noticed that the latest Annual Report contained Google Earth images for the first time - I wonder where they got that idea from?