London South East | The UK's favourite investor portal.

Whilst there is substantive legislation in place in Ireland, that ensure Providence's and Lansdowne’s legal entitlement to the lease undertaking, although I am sure that is still considered the measure of last resort, although the RKH arbitration will provide helpful legal precedent and it will also provide others the opportunity to focus the attention on the stagnation of existing O&G licences that Minister Ryan has created and that should also prove helpful to Barryroe, that said, in some respects that is probably a side show compared to the energy crisis and the very evident cracks within government in regards to Ireland's energy security, but nonetheless the Irish Times are right to point out the helpful legal precedent,…GL S

Frustrated Irish exploration investors could tap €190m Italian precedent

Coalition dragging its heels with firms so shareholders may opt for legal route that delivered in Italy

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/2022/08/25/frustrated-irish-exploration-investors-could-tap-190m-italian-precedent/

Phoenix Article - 4

?Alan Curran, who is coming on board as an interim CEO, has a lot of relevant experience over his 40-year career, going back to working as a petroleum engineer in the 1980s. He doesn’t, how ever, have experience of the Celtic Sea and is clearly coming in solely to manage the other consultants, NRG, which in turn retains RPS. The immediate problem Providence is facing is that having done its ‘K site’ survey last autumn – a precursor to deter mining a drilling location – the company is now waiting for what is known as a lease undertaking on Barryroe, which is to be issued by energy minister Eamon Ryan. Given his Green credentials, Ryan has so far managed to avoid issuing the licence to enable Prov idence to move forward, despite the fact that the Government is committed to ensuring that all existing licences can continue to be processed in the ordinary way.

?On May 19 in Shannon, however, Ryan said: “Oil and gas exploration has no place in Ireland’s energy future.” Given the current global energy crisis and Ireland’s reli ance on imports for 70% of its gas and 100% of its oil, this statement could come back to haunt the minister. It would appear that for the next decade Ireland is going to need an awful lot of oil and gas and the the development of Bar ryroe may be seen as crucial. Even out to 2050, the UN in tergovernmental panel on climate change advises that the world will still need 40% of current oil production and 55% of its current gas production.

?Europe as a whole currently depends on Russian gas for 40% of its requirements. If Vladimir Putin doesn’t cut this off com pletely, the EU itself is committed to reducing Russian fuel imports by two-thirds by the end of this year. This will leave Ireland mostly dependent on the British supplies over the winter, when it could become seriously expensive. ?It could be that Larry Goodman understands the importance of Barryroe and believes that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will force Ryan to push ahead with the granting of the lease undertak ing to Providence. He may also know that the company will need $65m to drill the two wells that will allow the central Barryroe area to deliver and he would be well placed to come up with the readies.

?In the meantime, Menton has had the idea of changing Providence’s name to Barryroe Offshore Energy. It is unclear what the point is, but the more pressing reality is that the shares are currently trading at just over 4c, at which Providence is capital ised at just €45m. ?If Barryroe does get developed, the shares, as Goodman understands, will be worth well over 10 times the current price!

Phoenix Article - 2

Instead, Plunkett chose Alan Linn, who had originally worked with big names such as Exxon and Cairn Energy. He was neither a geologist nor a geophysicist, but rather a chemical engineer. Linn then chose as a farm-in partner a small operation called Spot-On Energy, which claimed to have lots of connections to the Norwegian energy industry.

?Not too surprisingly, perhaps, this £2 company failed to deliver the goods and in July 2021 Plunkett fell on his sword and was followed out the door by Linn in October. Happily, for his seven-month stint, Plunkett still got €106,000, while Linn trousered an impressive €475,000 for his 10 months. Jimmy Menton joined the board in May last year, before taking over as chairman in July 2021. While known as a highly competent senior suit when at KPMG, he can’t have too much of an insight into offshore drilling operations. His other director ships include St Vincent’s Healthcare Group, Lisney auctioneers and CWSI Security.

?While Boldy continues to look like the prefect CEO candidate, having been through all the surveys of Barryroe and is probably more familiar with the discovery than anyone else, he was not the name unveiled last month as the new interim boss at Provi dence. Instead of bring ing in Boldy, Menton initially retained the small British oil and gas consultancy NRG Well Management International – set up by Andrew McKay to specialise in well examination. No doubt it is a competent operator but does not have specific knowledge of the south Celtic Sea basin. ?It looks as if Menton paid NRG €200,000 for the work it did in the last four months of 2021, a rather chunkier rate than the mere €60,000 pa Boldy is currently paid at Lansdowne. For example, NRG carried out a static and dynamic modelling study of the key Basal Wealden A sands in Barryroe to assess the reservoir performance and likely recovery factor, and also examined the development options. This is all work that Boldy could have delivered in a few weeks.

Thanks to Jodonne on Providence board

Phoenix Article - 1

?Has Goodman got his timing right in Providence???

THE MUSICAL chairs continue at Providence Resources, with the latest face popping up being beef baron Larry Good man, who now holds a 16.1% stake. His most recent buy-in was the 8.2% stake held by big UK investment group M&G, which clearly got tired of the procession of drilling and funding failures. It sold out the whole of its 80 million shares at 2c each, thus crystallising a 90% loss. What is clear is that the arrival of Goodman suggests that the wheels could finally be starting to turn at Providence and a huge jump in the price would immediately follow.??What is also clear is that while Goodman knows more about beef processing than most people on the planet, he knows very little about offshore oil and gas exploration. Then again, neither did Nick Furlong, who bought into Providence over a decade ago, relying on then chairman Pat Plunkett to provide guidance. Before the most recent development, the company managed to pour hundreds of millions of euro down the wells before hitting what looked like the real thing in the winter of 2011/12. The first drill that was put into the Barryroe field flowed at 4,000 barrels of oil a day equivalent.??On the back of this success, the then directors (Tony O’Reilly Jnr et al) raised €70m in April 2012 at €3.95 a share – over 10 times the current share price – but instead of focusing on the big 300 million barrel discovery only 50km offshore Cork in only 100m of water, they went to the Dunquin prospect in the 5,000m-deep South Porcupine, over 320km offshore Cork. ??

FUNDING
?Here the boys managed to get Exxon to farm in and €200m was splashed out to find nothing but water. In a second attempt, another consortium was put together to waste €100m drilling another non-commercial well. Pat Plunkett then oversaw O’Reilly Jnr signing up to a €200m farm-out with Chinese intermediary Apec, which committed to fully fund a five-well drilling programme for a 50% stake, but this all came to nothing. When Plunkett subsequently moved at the start of 2019 to install new management,, he didn’t opt for a geologist with both in dustry experience and – ideally – knowledge of the Celtic Sea, such as Steve Boldy, CEO of Providence’s 20% partner in Barryroe, Lansdowne Oil and Gas. Boldy has a doctorate in geol ogy and spent 19 years working for the big US Amerada Hess group as its UK and international exploration manager and was vice-president for Ramco in Ireland, the company that developed the Seven Heads gas field that lies right at the top of Barryroe.

Contingency plans are starting to come together and it would not be a huge surprise that indigenous O&G resources that can be accelerated through to production effectively are being discussed, so whilst Ryan will have one view, the social and economic viability of the country will be firmly on the agenda of others, as each day passes and this crisis worsens, the stronger the political will to support Barryroe will become, plus the FG party will also be mindful that their turn at the head of the table is coinciding with what could potentially be the worst of the crisis and they will recognise decisions need to be taken,

I personally don’t believe it was a coincidence that one day Varadkar was suggesting funding support was holding up Barryroe and the next days a funding was completed in short order and a few days on, LG and Vevan stepped up to 16% of the equity, I would suggest it is more a question of when, rather than if now,..GL S

“Government sources said the worst-case-scenario planning is unlikely to come to pass, but there is growing anxiety about the winter ahead.”

There are also contingency plans in place for gas rationing. If Ireland was to be affected by serious gas shortages, similar rationing plans have been drawn up that would be divided between direct gas users and electricity users, as the power sector is a primary consumer of gas. Hospitals, schools and home heating would be prioritised.

The plans are being drawn up as part of work by the Government’s new Energy Security Emergency Group which is planning for potential oil or gas shortages in Ireland and examining modelling scenarios. The body has various subgroups looking specifically at gas security, oil security and communications strategies among other topics. The subgroups meet either every week or every fortnight and are made up of senior Government officials and industry figures.

Industry sources have privately expressed concern about the winter period ahead, warning that any sudden threat of a cut-off of Russian energy could result in panic buying among customers, which would create a supply shock. The National Oil Reserves Agency currently holds about 85 days of oil stocks.

Government sources said the worst-case-scenario planning is unlikely to come to pass, but there is growing anxiety about the winter ahead.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2022/07/14/more-than-40-groups-of-essential-workers-to-be-prioritised-in-emergency-fuel-rationing-plan/

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for swizz

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Latest Share Chat

Member Info for swizz

Followers

Following

Posts (Last 30 Days)

Posts (All Time)

Last Post

Member Since

Share Chat Post Distribution (Last 30 Days)

Activity Log (Last 30 Days)

Please enter at least 2 characters

No results found

Search results

Recently viewed

Trending