Oilman Jim

A busy week for news.  PetroTal (PTAL) completed its first horizontal well and announced an initial four day production rate of 6,200 barrels of oil per day.  It's already spud its second horizontal well and is aiming for production of 10,000 barrels of oil per day by the end of the year with 20,000 barrels of oil per day targeted by the end of 2020.  Market cap is currently £129 million, which actually isn't expensive at all if these objectives can be met. Block Energy (BLOE) is another company drilling horizontal wells, but with rather less success.  It announced an operations update and claimed to have successfully cemented casing at the 38z well.  Completion of drilling operations is expected in around two weeks, so we should soon see whether they've been able to prevent fluid incursion, which comprised most of the claimed "production" at their previous well, 16z.  Block plans to sidetrack three other wells, test one of the field's gas ...

Mixed bag of announcements last week.  Let's start with Rose Petroleum (ROSE) , which announced an 85% reduction of their Paradox acreage from around 80,000 acres to 12,000 acres to save on annual lease rental costs.  They still retain the key drill site, but ROSE is already in this deal on a promoted basis, paying 100% of the well cost for a 75% interest in the acreage, so although they talk about it, it's difficult to see a further farm-out.  And since previous management couldn't raise the funds to drill this project, why should the new?  The current management talk of new deals, but still have no details - and the big unanswered question of course is how are they going to raise the finance both for any new ventures and for Paradox? Moving on to more positive matters, 88 Energy (88E) announced it had executed a rig contract for the upcoming drilling of the Charlie-1 appraisal well on the Central North Slope in Alaska.  The spud of th...

Solo Oil (SOLO) made an interesting announcement last week.  It's entered into a binding sale and purchase agreement to acquire a package of non-operated interests in natural gas fields in the Dutch sector of the North Sea.  The interests are in 14 gas fields and are mid-life assets with relatively low abandonment expenditure.  The aim is a self-funding balance sheet going forward with follow on development potential funded by re-investment of free cash flow  Since it's classed as a reverse takeover, it's shares have been suspended and it will be possible to express an opinion more accurately once the admission document is published. Another company aiming for North Sea production is Jersey Oil & Gas (JOG) .  Its shares came off sharply when it announced that Equinor had elected not to exercise its three  month option over a 50% equity interest in respect of the blocks containing the Buchan oil field and the J2 oil discovery.  The i...

I3 Energy (I3E) issued its interim report on Monday and set out a clear explanation of the current situation.  The first well result was a surprise to the third-party consultants who conducted due diligence on behalf of the institutional investors, which I think explains the heavy institutional selling.  All three sets of seismic utilised to map the Liberator structure had conformed to one another and resolved the 13/23c-9 well location as a low-risk target at a structural high.  However, the targeted upper Captain sand was not penetrated at the first well location, so I3E acquired the only other available seismic dataset over the area. This had previously been reviewed by I3E and determined to be unsuitable.  However, reprocessed, they believe this seismic will enable additional interpretation. To allow time to analyse the data and potentially re-permit an alternative location for Liberator's next appraisal well, I3E is drilling Serenity's SA-01 as the s...

Three companies currently are underway with their exploration drilling programmes:  I3 Energy (I3E) , Petro Matad (MATD) and  Hurricane Energy (HUR) , the latter of which announced the spud of its Warwick West well last week. MATD awaits the test results of Heron-1 and the initial drill results of Gazelle-1. I3E is awaiting the spud of its Serenity exploration well, with the Liberator appraisal well delayed pending the processing and interpretation of new seismic data. Pending the outcome of the drills, I think the latter two are purely for trading. Another company operating in the North Sea, Independent Oil & Gas (IOG) announced the settlement of its 100 million Euro bond raise, fully funding them for their core project next year. In the meantime, data acquired from the Harvey well is now undergoing analysis to generate a revised technical assessment of reservoir gas volumes and deliverability. IOG also announced interim results a...

Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC) now has passed the necessary shareholder resolutions to enable a financing for their targeted upcoming drills. They're hoping for a farm-out, but more likely is a large discounted placing. I don't think it's a buy now (it looks quite expensive at an un-financed market cap of £41million), but it could be quite interesting once the fund raising is done. Europa Oil & Gas (EOG) announced the award of a large exploration licence, offshore Morocco. They claim it has a number of 250 million barrel prospects and they're aiming for one or a number of farm-outs. The shares remain at their lows though and there's still no news of what were expected farm-outs in Ireland. At a £10 million market cap, there's huge potential upside here, but some patience may be necessary. Chariot Oil & Gas (CHAR) announced a CPR on additional prospects offshore Morocco. They now have an audited total remaining recoverable resource in excess ...

Three announcements from UK Oil & Gas (UKOG) last week. They've completed the acquisition of Magellan Petroleum, taking their interest in Horse Hill to 85.635%, obtained long-term production consent to produce 3,500 bopd from six wells for 25 years, and the rig arrives at Horse Hill later this month. There's going to be solid news flow moving forward, perhaps press and TV coverage too, and notwithstanding any reservations regarding the valuation case, with its huge investor audience I think the share price will be going higher. I3 Energy (I3E) had a troubled week, providing a useful reminder that nothing is ever risk free in the oil business. The expected sands were not present at the location of the pilot well and the share price halved. There are two further wells coming up, one appraisal and one exploration, both with around a 70% chance of success, so continuing volatility is ensured. I said in the blog three weeks ago that I3E was going to offer serious trading opp...