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Is there time to make an amendment this session? My thoughts were that this sliding scale was primarily to benefit from the massive increase in gold prices the last year.

In addition to U.S. and Chinese pressure, diplomatic missions from the UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa have also intervened, marking what three senior industry executives described as an unusually high-level response to a fiscal proposal.

"This is the first time I've seen the diplomatic ​community get involved at this scale," a senior industry source said.

Representatives from the missions met Ghana's lands and natural ​resources minister this month and presented a joint document outlining concerns, two people with direct knowledge of the meeting said. The group ‌is seeking ⁠further talks with the finance minister.

Chinese-owned mines, including Zijin, Chifeng and Shandong ​Gold have filed formal protests. A letter from the Association of China–Ghana Mining, copied to ​Beijing's ambassador and ⁠seen by Reuters, warned the proposal could threaten the viability of Zijin's Akyem, Chifeng's Wassa and Shandong's Cardinal gold mines. "The royalty issue has united companies like nothing in recent years," said the senior industry source.

The China lobbying is a big deal because the NDC really want the China trade and infrastructure deal to go through.

I'm hearing rumours that NDC is going to cancel the Royality hike due to last minute pressure from China and the US.

This article comes out yesterday:

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/china-us-pressure-ghana-halt-gold-royalty-hike-document-sources-say-2026-03-05/

Lets look a bit into the future, in 2028 FCF expected to grow to ~$1 billion as higher-margin LLOG/Mexico volumes replace higher-cost, higher-tax UK barrels. If leverage has come down nearer 1.0x by then, a 55-65% payout would mean $550-650m in distributions (base dividend + potential buyback resumption), implying a total yield of ~10-12% at today's share price. 5.5% dividend in 2026 is fine if it means debt reduction and buybacks. Looking good to me

How could the market not expect the dividend cut? They signalled it strongly before.

"Harbour said it intends to move distribution policy to a payout ratio approach in 2026, incorporating a base dividend and share buybacks, to align with international and US oil and gas peers. If they align with peers, it's likey we will see a dividend decrease of about 20-40% (30-50% of operating cash flow) with more of a focus on buybacks and acquisitions to increase reserve life."

This was my analysis in December, not unexpected at all for people following Harbour. Looks good to me, lets see how the market takes it.

They already signalled a dividend cut and payout change to focus on buybacks in the last results. This shouldn't be a surprise to the markets but we will see. Buybacks are shareholder returns, they increase EPS/share metrics, you get a bigger pie of the total company than before and allow more total yield per share in the future for the same total dividend amount.

Agreed, i do question why the SP is not going up with oil price and we know this will cause disruption for at least a few months. I'm going to wait for results but very tempting to top up here

@fordm How does it feel defending a regime that has murdered thousands of its own civilians, arrested girls for not wearing the Hijab, runs a strict sharia law where anyone opposing the violent and abusive regime are killed. There is a reason Iranians are celebrating this around the world.

Now onto Rolls Royce, I see RR benefiting from this energy insecurity due to the war, aside from the UltraFan and Military engines. Governments must be looking at SMR's as a way to gain energy independence in a low cost way, I can see a lot of renewed interest here.

@fordm No one cares about your low IQ ramblings, go spam twitter instead. This is a forum for RR related news

"Tomorrow, I will meet with our North Sea industry leaders to discuss the implications that they face and work with them to manage this uncertain period."

Nice.

Equinor and its partners have made a commercial oil discovery in the North Sea. The Norwegian energy major said that according to preliminary estimates the discovery holds between 25 million and 89 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalents. Equinor has an ambition to maintain approximately the same production level in 2035 as in 2020. About 70% of this will come from new wells and developments, and it plans to drill 250 exploration wells, most of them near existing fields in the North Sea.

The discovery was made in production license 057. Partners in the license include Equinor as operator with a 31% stake, Petoro with 30%, Harbour Energy with 24.5%,

Relatively modest discovery but shows that the North Sea has the potential to supply Britain with Oil and Gas up to at least 2040

It is now a matter of national security that we have an active and homegrown supply of oil and gas from the North Sea. It would generate tax revenues for HMRC, reduce energy costs as a bonus.

@Clued Come on, comparing a theocratic dictator that has killed and imprisoned tens of thousands of protestors and forces harsh Sharia law on its population to Trump is just wrong. You can hate Trump and Netanyahu sure, but celebrating if a missile hits the White House is a bit much.

👍. I do agree though that if this doesn't end in regime change then there will be questions about if this was worth all the instability and issues that will come with it from a US/UK perspective. Trump took a gamble but in my opinion it will take weeks to play out and see if it was the correct choice. But in either case, Iran has been weakened severely.

The only way this could be viewed as a failure and "USA limping home with a tail between their legs" is if you think the only objective is regime change, in which case I agree it could end that way but you would have to ignore the damage this would do to Iranian influence/terrorism funding/IRGC infrastructure/Ballistic missile capabilities and general support in Iran who most want this regime gone, Iranian Mullahs have killed tens of thousands of civilians and their economy is in the bin.

I don't see how the Mullahs are 1 up currently. Most of their leadership is dead, most of their IRGC bases and buildings are rubble, they've already depleted over a third of their ballistic missiles and now cannot make any more. Their economy will be dead in the water and the longer it goes on, the worse it will get.

Will this end up in regime change? I share your skeptism, the support in Iran is there but I doubt it could happen while this is going on but again, as their economy continues to grind to a halt we could see something. This has objectively weakened Iran to a barely functioning state.

Qatar, which accounts for 18–20% of global LNG trade, halts LNG production following Iranian drone strike.

Oh Stanley, if only it was as simple as that. We can all hope though

LSE is very slow for me this morning. I also can't load. Want to say this, Oil has likely hit a multi year bottom. Straight of Hormuz closed, oil refineries hit and instability in Middle East. Now is the time to secure our own oil in the North Sea for national security reasons, I hope Labour wake up to this reality.

Saudi Arabia shuts down one of the world's largest oil refineries, Ras Tanura, following Iranian drone strike. The whole refinery appears to be on fire.

Oil is going to go crazy.