Oilman Jim

Canadian Overseas Petroleum (COPL) announced completion of its Atomic acquisition.   Now suspended from trading, the company has made an application to cancel the listing of the shares from the Official List of the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, although the shares will remain listed on the Canadian Stock Exchange .   COPL then proposes to make a new application in respect of the enlarged group for admission to the Official List of the London Stock Exchange by way of a Standard Listing.   Although the deal superficially looks good, it appears the shares are going to be suspended from trading in London for quite a while. Independent Oil & Gas (IOG) announced a Goddard and Abbeydale area technical update, plus final results for the year ended 31 December 2020.   Extensive seismic reprocessing work over the past year has identified additional resources and opportunities on both P2438 (Goddard and Southsea) and P2442 (Thornbridge, Kelham and Abbeydale) a...

Kistos (KIST) announced the acquisition of Tulip Oil Netherlands, which owns an operating interest in the Q10-A offshore gas field, interests in other fields in the Dutch North Sea, including the Q10-B, Q11-B and M10/M11 discoveries, and further exploration and appraisal projects.   Total upfront consideration for the acquisition is EUR 220 million, comprised of a combination of cash, the assumption by Kistos of an existing bond instrument issued by Tulip’s offshore subsidiary, the issue of a new debt instrument and the issue to the seller of equity in Kistos (the amount of which is as yet undisclosed).  In addition, contingent consideration of up to EUR 163 million is payable on certain development milestones.   It is anticipated that KIST will carry out an equity placing.   The shares are now suspended (up 67.5% from the IPO price last year) pending publication of an AIM admission document   Next up in this category perhaps is Longboat Energy (LBE) .   M...

Jersey Oil & Gas (JOG) announced the findings of its “Concept Select Report” in respect of the Greater Buchan area development project, which they estimate to contain an aggregate 172 MMboe 2C contingent resource of light sweet crude and associated gas. The planned development is centred on resuming production at the Buchan oil field and producing the J2 and Verbier oil discoveries, as well as other existing and yet to find discoveries within the Greater Buchan area as future upside.   All that’s needed now is £1 billion to develop it and the plan is to launch a farm-out process.   Essentially it’s now a bet on whether they can pull that off. Tower Resources (TRP) announced an extension of the Pegasus loan facility to the end of November 2021.   TRP is now optimistic that it can get financing in place by the summer to drill the NJOM-3 well and hopes to repay the loan by 15 July 2021.   Discussions continue with potential farm-out partners for its Thali license ...

Serinus Energy (SENX) announced the flow-test results of the Moftinu-1008 well in Romania.   Approximately 667 boe/d, a decent result from a 1,000 metre well.   SENX is traded on both the London and Warsaw markets, with the share price in the latter being several times that of the former.   The company has attempted to explain this by pointing out that while all 1,140,660,629 issued and outstanding shares are eligible to be traded on AIM, only 78,629,941 of these shares are eligible to be traded on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.   Regardless, some still prefer to ignore the implications of the “float” numbers and continue to insist the Warsaw price proves that the London price is a bargain. i3 Energy (I3E) announced an operational update.   Production at its newly acquired Canadian portfolio remains stable with November 2020 to January 2021 averaging 9,150 boe/d.   Forecasted 2021 net operating income (revenue minus royalties, opex, transportation and process...

Predator Oil & Gas (PRD) issued an operational and corporate update.   The main point in the announcement is that the Guercif MOU-1 well pad construction is programmed for April 2021.   Good progress is being made onshore Trinidad too with its CO2 injection project and Predator also remains focussed on providing a niche solution to near-term security of energy supply for Ireland, during a transition to a dominantly renewable source of energy, utilising its floating storage and regasification unit concept.   PRD has been a strong performer and reached 8.25p last week.   I don’t mention many in the private blog (only the few I believe are certain to go up), but Predator is one of them and I’ve been covering it from as low as 1.3p. Pantheon Resources (PANR) announced a Talitha-1 operations update.   The current plan is to test the Shelf Margin Deltaic, Basin Floor Fan (two separate zones) and the Kuparuk zones.   As the company emphasises, testing all z...

88 Energy (88E) announced a not unexpected A$12 million placing at 0.45p.   As a result, the company is fully funded for all planned activity through to the end of the calendar year.   88E now has funding to drill the Harrier prospect, in addition to Merlin, which provides a combined gross aggregate target of over 1 billion barrels of recoverable oil, on trend to large existing discoveries.   The resignation of David Wall also was announced, but no reason was given.   More on 88E in the private blog. Bahamas Petroleum Company (BPC) announced its widely expected duster and the price collapsed by 70%.   The well did encounter hydrocarbons, but it’s very rare that an oil drill does not.   The issue of course is commerciality.   It’s important to understand that the most likely end result with any of these AIM/London small cap oil projects is failure, particularly so if no farm-out to an actual oil company has been achieved.   That’s why I believe t...

PetroTal (PTAL) announced a successful $100 million bond issue.   It intends to use the proceeds to repay all existing outstanding loans, to finance the continued development of the Bretana oil field, to provide support for crude oil hedging transactions, and to finance potential acquisitions.   With this completed, PetroTal can more realistically target its goal of 20,000 bopd production.   I mentioned PTAL positively towards the end of last year at 7.6p, after having been rather negative from the low 30s down.   It’s now more than doubled to 16.375p. 88 Energy (88E) issued a further operations update.   The p ermit to drill for the Merlin-1 well has been approved, field operations are fully underway, rig commissioning is almost complete with mobilisation imminent and well spud is expected later this month or early next.   88 Energy is not saying anything yet about the second well, Harrier-1, which would probably require another fundraising if it is goin...