The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
Its like Kind Hearts and Coronets on here! Nothing abusive about any of my tweets apart from some light mocking. Unlike some on here. I'm touched that someone would take the time to trawl through my twitter history. Obviously you are all correct, all eight Alec Guinness's! I've been rumbled. I clearly know nothing about oil and gas. I will step back, and await the farm-in partner and gas pipeline announcement. It can't be far off given that those wells, on powerpoint at least, pre-drill, "for demonstration only" - as the SLB cut out slide says - are superior to anything even the late great Aubrey McClendon could put his name to. Or my old pal Floyd Wilson of Petrohawk fame. Not to mention JimBob Moffatt! This could redefine the oil industry as we know it. A few geezers on here have uncovered the equivalent of Spindletop. Keep it under your hat chaps. I'm clearly out of my depth among this august gathering. Night all....
Olderwiser
Its literally written in the presentation - SWC - Side Wall Core, right next to the Pipeline State well line intersecting the seismic. Bob R mentions it 3 times within the space of a minute. As for gas reinjection, Bob R has also mentioned it specifically with reference to maintaining pressure in previous webinars, most recently in the AGM webinar, in direct connection with the low/bubble point reservoir pressure. Anyway I can see you are getting unpleasant so lets leave it there.
Olderwiser
I have nothing to apologise to Scot for. He has used abusive language to me here and elsewhere. Bob R mentions "sidewall cores at Pipeline State" twice at minute 16.53, and 17.44 of the presentation. He doesn't mention "whole core". From this he deduces poro-perm in Ahpun East around 10km away. Again at 17.58 he mention sidewall core numbers and "SWC" or sidewall core is referenced on the seismic chart on the specific slide he is referring to. So perhaps, you in fact owe me an apology. Feel free to check for yourself.
Olderwiser
My apologies if i have been mistaken and yes that is what it says in the RNS. But Bob R repeatedly talked of sidewall core on the webinar at PS. I see whole core is parenthesised in the RNS but if this is the case why does he not refer to it on the call. Can you show me where on the webinar he mentions whole core? And if that whole core pertains to the relevant section under scrutiny.
It really speaks volumes that most of the writers on this chat think it is justified to behave in abusive ways while hiding behind their anonymity. I have never attacked anyone's character, in fact i have been scrupulous in giving praise where its due. The only subject I have interrogated is what the company/management say and its validity. I do wonder if those of you who are abusive on an ad hominem level would like it if your comments were relayed back to your employer or the people you work with or the communities you live among. Some of you perhaps have children: is this the sort of behaviour you would encourage in them? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Its easy to say that you disagree and argue the merits of the points raised, but to engage in such low level of nastiness makes a mockery of a share bulletin board. And frankly it undermines your point as those people who witness it discount any more reasoned arguments you may have. In the end it undermines the very story you are trying to promote. I have no problem with someone saying "I think you are mistaken, and this is why...", and even then to ridicule arguments made. I have simply said - it is not a serious proposition to depend on funding from a pipeline that isn't built, and doesn't look obviously economic however you cut the numbers, based on a resource story that isn't backed by multiple EWT's (extended well tests that definitively prove commerciality) and whole core analysis, PVTs etc. I don't believe it is obvious or implied that drill carries or vendor financing or bank funding will be provided either. On that basis, you are left as always with equity or quasi equity (more converts).
Only discussion is with one counterparty - ie the gas. Which needs a FEED study. Which needs a pipeline. Which doesn't work without LNG. Do the maths. 11bn cost. 33bcf alaska gas demand. Currently met by Cook inlet. So has to compete with Cook Inlet gas. Which currently costs at CityGate $8-9/mcf. So my numbers are pretty clear. Even at $10/mcf with $1 for PANR that would be less than a 1% return, or 3% for displacing all of that Cook Inlet production, which presumably would need a big discount so is for the birds. Hilarious.
TLDR - Hobbs has basically admitted, AGDC fantasy aise, no one serious is prepared to finance this - no drill carry, no banks, no vendor financing - just a fantasy on an 11bn gas pipeline that won't wash its face based on 10bcf a year of demand in Alaska (the gap left by declining Cook Inlet production). at $10/mcf the most that would raise is $100m a year - even if that all went to the pipeline owner that would be less than a 1% return ffs. Even if all Alaska demand was switched out that would be $300m a year max tariff. A 3% return. No one is going to touch that.
Who was it that said they had whole core. Oh yeah Scot. Well they don't. Just sidewall. No one serious going to punt on these fantasy numbers without whole core and a proper long term EWT from a long lateral. As for the funding: "Funding Secured" as Elon would say!
Why? I'm agnostic whether long or short. Shorters are the ultimate price support when things go badly - they have to buy. They literally make the market more efficient. I've been long oil stocks and short them. I have no emotion regarding them, they are just prices on a screen, either at a premium or discount to what I calculate as intrinsic value. Why does that make me horrible? You seem to have a very distorted view of shorting. A short is simply a long in reverse - you buy then sell, I sell then buy. And so what? Its a neutral trade in the round.
Shorted it at 129p, covered most in the teens, adding now. Very profitable. Thanks mostly to you chaps.
1,2bn of producible oil. If so I'm guessing it would take $50bn+ to get it all out of the ground. And for that money I've got an LNG project to sell you!
Folks can challenge me all they like about PANR's oil. But the gas is pie in the sky. a) They need to inject it into the reservoir to sustain pressure. b) There isn't a snowballs chance in hell of that LNG scheme getting off the ground, and without it no one is going to build a pipeline to cook inlet. Its just not economic. 1) Japan/S Korea won't pay the fixed ticket price to make it work ($15/mcf+), 2) China will ultimately source its gas from Russia given the geopolitics in Europe. Gazprom gas will go east. 3). Scalability of LNG Canada in BC, backed by rich gas resources there. 4) Jap nukes coming back on stream, 5) Huge price/cost and timescale.... Need shovels in the ground before construction permit expires in 2030.
"We did not perform an economic analysis on these resources, as such the economic status of these resources is undetermined". "Our estimates have not been risked for the possibility that the contingencies are not successfully addressed" Well quite. Good timing for the ISA inflows though.
Gas to oil ratio is 10x on calorific basis, or about 60mscf gas per barrel. (1.45mmsf produced for 24.8 barrels of oil total). The barrel in question is over 40 API. Pressure at wellhead well below 2000psig. The 420psig quoted is is what the Donald would call "low energy". This is a dead wet gas discovery, which is pretty wet in terms of water too. Doubt this thing would have much value in Louisiana, let alone Alaska.
Correction - second page shows 10-77bopd with an avg of 42. Total barrels recovered - 24 in total (!). Pretty high water cut but obvs frack fluids. 1.45mmscf of raw gas produced too (final page). So apart from water cut of 85% + at end of test you've got 10:1 gas to oil (calorific equiv). Bottom line - its a low pressure wet gas field.
Great that they have flowed oil to surface but a peak gauge flow rate of 70 barrels a day doesn't give us any info about how much oil flowed over how many days in total or even an average for a day (I mean how long did it flow at this rate, over what period, what was the average etc). So, while nice to get oil to surface it is an extremely selective bit of data to issue. Secondly it doesn't tell us how much gas flowed (or water for that matter). 40 api oil is pretty close to condensate or drip gas. So again it looks like a significant amount of gas production with a modest amount of oil. Begging the question what to do with the gas. As referenced in my earlier remarks on the Ahpun topset.
Its pretty clear to me that gas injection below bubble point is required to support reservoir pressure, otherwise with less gas in solution (its a solution drive field) there is dwindling residual pressure drive to push the liquids out of the reservoir, and more importantly and particularly in a low permeability field you will have gas bubbles emerging to block pore spaces in which oil can pass through to get to the well bore. Some kind of pressure support mechanism, involving gas and potentially water injection is required to optimise production, and I believe management have been alluding to that (see Bob R's remarks on the post Kodiak report Webinar) in multiple recent webinars, indeed with slide references to SLB's dynamic modelling and consideration of gas injection strategies. That may go hand in hand with artificial lift, although i haven't seen that referenced at PANR yet. I really don't see this as being a bone of contention, and believe OW was referencing something that was widely understood.
The point I was making - subjectivity klaxon (!) - is that starting a virgin project with solution gas fields in tight reservoirs in thin sands below bubble point pressure, requiring pressure support and water management+gas injection, in extreme conditions in a high cost region with relatively high cost of service mobilisation/demobilisation and day rates....is perhaps not the home run type investment that some of you might be thinking it is...there's a lot of capital and opex and other complications to consider vs say banging a few laterals into the Delaware wolfcamp and fracking them to bits....And here's the subjective bit - this is a complex project with unreliable PI projections....Unless you have a suite of long term well tests or production history you are going to struggle with drill carries/vendor finance/reserve financing, and thats made even harder by it being in Alaska near the arctic circle.
Here's a link for those that think financing is a sinch...
https://www.csis.org/analysis/will-new-funding-rules-kill-alaskas-oil-boom#
So think for most (perhaps all) banks its a no-no...
But - who knows, maybe someone high up at SLB will take a hail mary on it. I just choose to take the under on that one.
Rabito - It was clearly Olderwiser's rejoinder that gas reinjection was there for pressure support. Allowing a gas cap to develop in thin (50 net/200 ft gross) pay is hardly optimal.
I quote Olderwiser in his "demolition" job a few weeks back:
"Rubbish, PANR have already allocated and budgeted, 1 reinjection well per 3 producers....."
Here quoting Pantheon December 23 presentation:
"Up to 30 production and 10 injection wells from the Alkaid and Phecda pads" (p17). This is quoted alongside the "infrastructure requirement to meet production self sufficiency" heading. So with all due respect, this sounds like a primary recovery strategy given this is the early stage investment required to get to self funding status. This is quite unusual for a brand new onshore project to have to start with a need for what are as Rabito says, secondary or tertiary recovery techniques. But perhaps there are analogues that I haven't seen, so I'm not ruling it out.
Anyway, gas production is largely a red herring...there is not going to be a pipe for at least a decade, if at all. And to produce gas in the quantities required for LNG you need large conventional production from Point Thomson and Prudhoe (yes with scrubbers). Again my subjectivity here so feel free to ignore.
You guys can accuse me of subjectivity all you like but you can't deny that the stated reservoir pressure is basically on the bubble and if you want it to flow properly you need an injection strategy, either water, or gas or ideally both. If you flow the gas to surface without addressing this you not going to get much in the way of liquids out over time. Now I was not very optimistic about this anyway for reasons stated. On a related point, regarding nitrogen injection, my service chum in North Dakota (service company) quotes me $2.5 a 100 scfs of N2, so that's $25,000 for 1mmcfd injection, daily, or for a bigger job $125,000 a day for 5mmcfd N2, so for a couple of weeks that getting on for $2m. Add in mobilization costs to Alaska and you are probably adding another few $100ks. It is not, as previously suggested contradictory to inject nitrogen to sustain reservoir pressure and lighten/reduce pressure around the well bore - the key is the differential pressure. I assume the same task would be performed by gas injection, or indeed CO2 if there was any floating around. Although N2 is apparently superior given its density.