Chris Heminway, Exec-Chair at Time To ACT, explains why now is the right time for the Group to IPO. Watch the video here.
MaverickD - I think you will find HUR has surrendered the licences as they relate Whirlwind and Strathmore.
They won't have £130m at year but closer to £ 110m if they are lucky. We are assuming 16500 bod are pumped avg. Now it is 12000bod. They may have less than £94m free cash at year end.
Haggis_trap Here is an interesting section from the June 2020 report from Edison, available on their website to download: "The flowing bottom hole pressure (BHP) to date has been lower than modelled pre-start up and by increasing the drawdown in the well to achieve this higher rate it is possible that the bottom hole pressure (BHP) could approach bubble point (the last reported BHP was 150psi above bubble point). Should this occur, Hurricane believes that the resulting liberated gas will move to a gas cap given the high angled nature of the fractures."
The oil is flowing from the heels of the wells which are 375m apart and 79m from well toes (end of the wells) which are lower.
As I understand it, they cannot determine any remedial action because they are now thinking the Oil Water Contact may higher up the well (i.e. shallower). Furthermore, the shallower the OWC is, the closer the section from which oil is pumped, is to its sister well ( ie closer than 375 mn) so remedial work involves some risk if it does not work as the interference might actually get worse. Is this a correct understanding of it.
As to the initial paragraph which precedes the section you refer to, I have no idea really what it means but it seems there is more than just perched water that is adding to the interference at higher pumped barrel rates. Do you know what it is or does someone else have idea about what is being talked about?
Thanks LW. Still not at all clear on it. The numbers referred to on the webcast of 27th April were much higher. Will have to listen to it again. Sad if a lower number chosen in future disappointments as that more or less settles the stable rate at 15600 bod, way off 18000 and still further off 20000.
To date 4.4m barrels has been pumped with 540,000 barrels of water. If the FPSO capacity is 17% then the maximum water that the FPSO could have coped with would have 750000 barrels of water, an extra 200000 barrels give or take. So all hinges on what can be pumped with a stable water cut. As I keep saying Trice remained extremely positive even on April 27. There is no doubt that 20000 bopd is not possible. And action is required, either remedial action on Well 7 and possibly Well 6 and/or a new drill possibly. The 20000 bopd was I believe, discussed with the OGA. Anything less does somewhat mean the model is unproved. The OGA will imo certainly wish to be involved. A decision has to be made. That is clear. The question is what.
The number is 12000 bopd for Well 6 not 2000bopd.
Here is a post from Advfn which caught my eye:-
Comedy, the fundamentals are important, and HUR has cash, is producing oil, is still in early stage. However, at the moment, and given the unclear announcements, HUR is on unsure ground. The BOD, if commercially orientated, need to `up their game' (lets hope they know what they are doing, there is no evidence of that as yet). With Dr T the game was proving the potential....he was doing well in the speculative uncertainty of FB's. Who in the current BOD would you say are the ones to watch, and why? To me they seem to represent all that I dislike...`hangers on', `has beens', financiers... I could state the obvious by saying `it seems the only value that the current BOD have to add is the value added to themselves'...but lets see. In the meantime it would be honest to be balanced...neither ramping/de-ramping. At the moment comedy, you are inclined to optimism without referring to the wider context, and history (journey) I am in big style, (less than before... I remain am agnostic...ready to jump in or out) but I don't trust your integrity. I don't like what seems to have happened to Dr T. If there were different views, I could understand...is there any? I don't see any! Those that pushed out Dr T have got a lot to prove....about time they started. Announcing on a Monday that well 6 increased to 12,000 bopd on a Friday whilst at the same time Dr T had resigned indicates they know more than Dr T (who is the one with insight/knowledge)....I find the events warning signals....convince me otherwise. Ball in your court `newbie' Comedy (who called it wrong! a paid poster?). In the meantime I prefer the critical posts.
I agree with you if you are right. The 7 well water cut has 46% for a while. The 6 well went up from 6% to 8%. Both have been stuck there for a while relatively within the year of pumping since June 2019 but he could have been lying or blind to the data. Nothing in the last webcast or the previous Capital Markets Day supports that. His going will allow fresh eyes to appraise it. Your view of it is perfectly valid. Let's hope an announcement soon clears up the situation.
Sailplane - a great post. I do not quite understand it but it sounds correct. The situation on both wells is not ideal but no doubt the interference is perched water.
I have a question. In the webcast Dr. Trice states that 4.4m barrels of oil has been produced against 0.5m barrels of water. I am not sure exactly how much oil was on average coming from each well as they have been playing around with rates. Certainly more from well 6. The water cut is stated at 46% overall and 6% from well 6. All the same, one assumes a significant amount of oil has been pumped from well 7. I calculated that the proportion of water pumped to date; 0.5m/4.4m is not remotely close to 46% but a very reasonable 11.33% from memory. How is that explained?
I have zero technical knowledge of oil or engineering but it did occur to me that the perched water perhaps was draining already and that this was causing added interference to each well and between them; in the way that an emptying bottle will result in surges of liquid coming out along with air, the glugging effect increasing the rate of water as the bottle empties. A thought. I have no idea if it is relevant but it could mean that the amount of water produced, has stabilised but the interference has and is increasing?
Here's hoping Dickbat - at the least!
Your shares won't go up any time soon but honestly I don't think there is a a problem with the OWC, specifically any interference from the aquiier. The problem is reduced pressure to pump oil on both wells due to perched water. On the April 27 webcast, Dr. Trice expressed that he was delighted with testing, in fact everything though there was still perched water. ESPs have not been put into use yet. My belief errs towards a move for him to go some time before April 27. Stobie's earlier departure helps to explain this. Have you considered that Trice was not pushed or shoved but chose to leave of his own free will because his job was done. How do you explain the appointments of directors, committee etc, etc. These are not decided or done at the drop of a hat. Nor îs it clear Trice is on gardening leave. He may be staying to continue to assist on data interpretation. The sudden character of the departure is surely because of the emergency that a drastic fall in prices presented. I think most of the criticism of Trice here has not only been unfair but more seriously completely wrong. This move is to deal with a crisis and to take the company to the next stage. The model has been proved, albeit imperfectly. I accept perhaps Trice has not been good for the SP but the communication problëms have been the bod's doing and whoever has produced their updates. Trice has consistently mostly been the model of clarity, always more than 100% positive about progress. What more can the man have done? If you read my posts, you will see what I think. It is early for a miracle!
Please excuse the typos, omissions and mispellings: ît was done on my mobile. I will send a list of errata asap.
The CPR now being is a mine of information and in my view confirms HUR's approach. It points out that testing began in June 2019, a point made by Dr. Trice on April 27. He observed that it was coming up to the anniversary of the beginning of testing and more would be needed. Remember: this is necessary for field development. The 2 wells were aimed yo produce only for 6 years but produce sufficient oil at sufficient prices to finance the drilling programme of commitment wells. I would say it is thanks to Trice that the Company has such a good relationship with the OGA. The water interference was known and may simply be a circumlocution for the water-cut. We have not had any information of the nature, extent or full reasons, explanation for it or its likely trend. Not do we know what the wells can produce steadily, either individually or together. And it seems the testing of 6 alone will work towards. Increased water on this well be a serious worry. Happily, Trice says not but he has done this before when talking about the 2 wells together. At any event, they are not going to produce 20000 bod, let alone 30000 bod. In a sense, we seem to be revisiting individual well testing that has already taken place. That is OK since if 6 shows a consistent water cut of 8%, it means we can more easily infer it is not getting worse on its own. Perhaps then well 7 can similarly be retested to see if the same can be said there. Then perhaps a determination can be made for now on an optimal combined rate. Or come to determination on remedial work on 7. There must be a number of options. It is essential that they are rationally based.
What surprised me most of all from the CPR was the projected oil prices for each year which now look wildly ambitious and hive not the faintest hint of even reasonable volatility in Brent prices. This was a mistake in my view, and I cannot immediately cofirm if it is HUR's model. However, keeping that in mind, HUR may have miscalculated with GWA as to what drills should be done.
The issue for me is not the model employed by Dr.Trice but the financial consequences of the oil price fall, coronavirus and a sluggish economic recovery. They need to take decisive action and execute it equally decisively in my view. And move on.
Not sure I agree with you either about GWA. Warwick Deep and Warwick West were both at the edge of Trice's dataset. If they had come in with nice results, then that would have gone a long way on beginning to prove out the extent of the Warwick part of the licence, bringing Spirit 50% of the production, and accelerating its aim and right to become the operator. It hasn't worked but that does not mean the licence does not hold big amounts of oil. All we know is that the oil is not of the type found at Lancaster although the Lincoln oil is. GWA may not be connected to Lancaster but Lincoln could very well be. The oil samples found at the 2 Warwick drills are light with low API's of 44/45%, oil which sells for prices above Brent. So imo drilling somewhere in Trice's dataset might well produce oil in commercial quantities and as of this can be said more definitely for Lincoln. Admittedly, any drills are unlikely - with the bother with Spirit, and plans to cut costs this year. In any imminent takeover, a buyer will certainly try to take your view and the Company will resist it depending on and to the extent it needs new financing. So then it is subject to negotiation. GWA could be a dead duck now but one that could pretty quickly resuscitate itself in changed circumstances.
C - I did actually see this which is why I thought it strange that Dr. Trice should still be talking about a tie-in. Another additional factor to muddy the waters about Lincoln and what actually has been happening. My previous posts set out my understanding of it.
Conkcio - I think the first one may have been superceded by later events this year. It is certainly open.
Where I mention that the drills for GWA emanated from Spirit, I say Trice said this in the webcast. Not so, it was in the previous webcast from the capital markets day. And it is from memory again. There are only so many hours in a day!
LW - From memory Trice was talking about at least 17000 bod from Lancaster. Chaffe was talking about 18000 to 18500 bod. I had to listen several times because not only was the way these details were given oddly phrased but also in the case of Dr. Trice, he seemed to be skating over it as if it were an unwelcome topic. Chaffre seemed somewhat breezily indefinite about the numbers he oddly inserted. If you looked at page 46 you will see that the free cash at year end is expected to be $94m based on a bod price of $30 bod. So far so good. Nowhere does page 46 give the number of barrels necessary to produce this amount of free cash. That is why I was listening so carefully to the webcast to get some idea. The figures from Trice were actually 17000 to 17500 and as indicated higher from Chaffe. As I say, oil prices were $23 that day so perhaps Chaffe let his rather serious facade slip when mentioning the higher number, showing that he thought it did not much matter how many barrels were pumped at these prices. That price would be a disaster for them. Then days later I discovered the prior page mentions a figure of 16500 bod but there is no implicit connection between page 45 and page 46. You have to conclude that. So we have 5 different numbers if my memory serves me OK, and we have to conclude are these avg, for a month or two or maximum numbers. All this means that a cloud of fog has descended on Lincoln, free cash at year end and as previously mentioned how many flipping wells there are, was it the 2014 well that was plugged or the 2016 well as Trice says and if as Trice says if there might be a tie-in for the horizontal well, had there been or would there be an OGA application for consent. I had misread one later update, thinking a tie-in consent had already been given but it is only an option presumably before obligatory plugging in 2022. My final point is that then, since the catastrophic fall in oil prices, a figure 15600 bpd has been mentioned as the average pumped oil per day since January in place of 16500: it seemed low given the rather limited period of low prices since its appearance in this BB. Where did it come from.
More generally and without wishing to implicitly **** off Spirit, from the webcast, Trice says I think that the 2 GWA drills emanated from Spirit, and were exploratory in the sense that they were situated at the limits of what HUR ( Trice and his data ) indicated as being fruitful. Since they were paying for it, and the Company was on a roll, he probably thought if they hit the target it would send the company into the stratosphere, and if not HUR was not paying for it. Under the circumstances, HUR could afford the risk. Then came all the hassle with caronavirus not to mention Brexit. I therefore got the feeling that Trice did not think that Spirit was a easy partner for him to deal with. Stobie was Trice's man. The iron fist in the velvet glove. He was ousted without any explanation. I detected the shift with Spirit.
LW - Still puzzled - these are not the figures that Dr. Trice mentioned for an already plugged 2016 well at Lincoln which I did set down here having listened carefully to the Webcast ( 27th April ) and made notes . So I am still at sea about the wells at Lincoln, consents and whether or no there is any intention even theoretically to run the second ( sic ) well back to the FPSO ( the horizontal one ) . Trice gives all the details according to his knowledge, about API and flow rates. He further mentions the rates that have been pumped to date this year at Lancaster for the 2 wells and there is no mention of 15600bod from him or Chaffe. Again I have set down the numbers before. I dislike factual uncertainty and this billboard has consistently confirmed that there is for some reason persistent factual uncertainty about Lincoln which I have been bleating on about for quite a few posts. The numbers bandied by Trice for Lancaster are considerably higher. Even the APIs and flow rates are different. Trice goes into considerable detail. I thought there was a tie-in consent for 1 Lincoln well but realise there probably isn't. It seemed strange to me that no consent had been applied for, given Trice's remarks but accept that there is merely an extension to delay plugging the unplugged well which Trice, presumably was suggesting might in the end be tied-in to the FPSO. I suggested that an explanation for this would be that a decision on it between the JV partners was in limbo, perhaps even one favouring tie-in and not or not yet the other, but both agreeing to plug within the OGA deadline, now extended. Anyway factual inconsistencies are not unknown but they do tend to mean not much can be said accurately where they are allowed to persist. Correct me anyone if I am wrong from the Webcast.
HUR must have a stack of tax losses brought forward from previous years. Have all those been absorbed/written-off?