Oilman Jim

Another busy week.  Lansdowne Oil & Gas (LOGP)  announced its placing: £488,000 at 0.6p to keep the company going until the end of the year.  Now, their target is to complete a farm-out deal within the next six months.  LOGP is trading at a valuation of 8 cents per contingent resource barrel, so there's scope for a significant re-rating if the farm-out comes about.  Same for its Barryroe partner Providence Resources (PVR) too. Following its placing the previous week,  Predator Oil & Gas (PRD) announced the exercise of its rig option with mobilisation to occur between 15 March and 30 April.  From posts on social media, there’s plenty of placing stock still to be flipped.  The next important announcement here will be the publication of the CPR, which will allow their project to be properly assessed. PetroTal (PTAL)  issued an oil reserves and operational update.  I mentioned declines and a promotion out of Zug and e...

It's been a particularly interesting week.  Starting with Baron Oil (BOIL) about which I said last weekend the only question was the price of the placing, that question was answered on Friday: 0.1p.  Quite a blow for those who believed the social media pumpers' stories of a $300 million takeover and bought it at up to nearly 0.6p.  I did warn about what would happen, but on the bright side for those who bought before the ramp at 0.1p and below, the company is now fully funded to drill the El Barco-3x well in Peru later this year. There’s shades of I3 Energy (I3E) here, where there was a similar stunt by the ill-informed misinterpreting and distorting a RNS announcement back in December.  Again I warned about it and again I turned out to be right.  Now at a much lower price, I3E issued a corporate update last week, stating it is making good progress in its farm-out process to fund a 2020 appraisal drilling program on its assets in Blocks 13/23c in the...

I mentioned Baron Oil (BOIL) last weekend and said I thought there would be a fundraising.  The preliminaries for that started on Tuesday with a website update incorporating an old Shell report already in the public domain and, with plenty of misunderstandings and misinterpretations on social media, the share price rose 1,000%.  In the real world, Baron has $500,000 to pay on 26 April 2020, plus of course all its other expenses, and as at 31 December 2019, its net cash position was £346,000.  Only question now is the price of the placing. Touchstone Exploration (TXP) pleased the market with its announcement that the average flow back rate at Cascadura during the final 14-hour test period was 5,180 barrels of oil equivalent per day and the shares enjoyed a strong performance with the company stating that the Cascadura production test results represented a dramatic change for Touchstone.  This was a bright spot, since much of the news last week had neg...

It’s been a busy week.  Hurricane Energy (HUR)  issued a trading and operational update and addressed the recent share price weakness, confirming that they are not aware of any subsurface, operational or commercial reasons that would have caused such decline.  HUR was in the mid-40s a couple of months ago and now it's more than halved to 21p.  Generally, I think that with these type of companies, the best profits are to be had in the exploration/appraisal phase; many tend to plateau or decline once the development/production stage is reached. Also operating in the North Sea, Jersey Oil & Gas (JOG)  announced the acquisition of Equinor's 70% interest in Licence P2170.  Payment terms are $3 million upon sanctioning by the Oil & Gas Authority of the Field Development Plan, $5 million upon first oil and an undisclosed royalty.  This increases total 2C discovered resources across the Greater Buchan Area to 142 mill...

It was a busy week, with a number of interesting announcements.  After a suspension in Australia, 88 Energy (88E) completed a £2.6 million placing at 1.1p.  They also confirmed earlier in the week that Charlie-1 is proceeding as planned ahead of the scheduled February 2020 spud date, permitting of the Yukon acreage is underway ahead of potential drilling in 2021, subject to farm-out, and the JV partners plan to conduct a formal farm-out process to fund further appraisal of Project Icewine Unconventional.  Notwithstanding the 1.1p placing, the share price remained relatively resilient, trading around 1.3p, substantially above the previous 0.7p placing price around which I mentioned it as a favourite several times towards the end of last year. 88E’s previous drilling partner,  Red Emperor Resources (RMP) issued its quarterly report.  RMP continued to conduct due diligence on a number of potential projects and, at the end of the quarter, had cash o...

It's been an interesting week and some of the shares I mentioned last weekend performed strongly.  RockRose Energy (RRE) traded at nearly £23 a share, up from just under £20 the previous Friday and Tower Resources (TRP) traded at nearly 0.8p on Tuesday up from just over 0.5p.  I said a couple of times towards the end of last year that Tower was a good buying opportunity under 0.4p.   Both issued news.  RockRose announced the change of operatorship of the Brae Area, although they point out it is of no strategic or financial consequence.  An alternative take is expressed in Saturday’s Energy Voice article.  Tower Resources announced a Cameroon operational update, they’ve been granted a further extension of the production sharing contract until 19 September this year.  All now hinges on whether they can negotiate a farm out. On that subject, United Oil & Gas (UOG) has no takers for its Jamaica farm-out of what they describe as a "super wil...

First full week of the New Year and plenty going on.   Rockhopper Exploration (RKH)  announced Heads of Terms with Navitas to farm-in to Sea Lion.  This adds additional strength to the Sea Lion joint venture, which Rockhopper believes will increase the likelihood of a successful senior debt project financing for the Sea Lion Phase 1 development.  Key of course will be the local political situation. Sea Lion JV partner  Premier Oil (PMO)  announced its trading and operations update.  2019 production was 78,400 boepd.  It's also looking forward to drilling its first well in Alaska, which it describes as "potentially transformational" for Premier, whose own interest comes via a farm out from  88 Energy (88E) , which incidentally is now up 100% from when I mentioned it as a favourite towards the end of last year.   Premier also announced proposed UK North Sea acquisitions, which will add around 23,000 boepd p...