Oil Man Jim Company Oil & Gas Podcast 19th October 2019

 

Many drills now are underway and getting the bad news out of the way first, Petro Matad announced further disappointing drill results at Gazelle-1.

They say they are casing it pending further evaluation, but in reality, it appears to be non-commercial. They also say well testing at Heron-1 is costing more than expected, so they're postponing their plans to return to drill in Block 5 during 2019. I think placing can be expected.

Petro Matad's current drilling programme may now have finished, but on the bright side, I3 Energy, UK Oil & Gas, Alba Mineral Resources, Coro Energy, Empyrean Energy and Falcon Oil & Gas all continue to drill.

Next up per their announcements will be 88 Energy, whose Alaska well is planned for February next year and it's a big one targeting 1.6 billion barrels. Looking at the list, UKOG and 88E would be my favourites here.

Another company hoping to drill in Alaska either this winter or in spring next year is Pantheon Resources, who want to drill a minimum of two wells, subject to completion of a successful farm-out. Therefore, assuming they actually have valuable acreage attractive to a farm-in partner, it was rather surprising to see them announce that Halliburton will transfer their entire working interests in the leases to them in exchange for Pantheon accepting responsibility for future lease obligations.

It appears that Halliburton views the Pantheon acreage as having no value at all, in fact being more of a liability than an asset. This isn't really a surprise to those who follow this company, but how on earth does it continue to maintain a £90 million market cap? The most interesting question is who supports the share price of this company - and why?

Bahamas Petroleum Company posted its open offer circular to shareholders. The offer is 1 new share in the company for each 5 shares held, at a price of 2 p per share. 338 million new shares are being offered and they're hoping to raise 6.8 million pounds.

Key here and the actual purpose of the offer in my opinion having previously denied they were planning a placing to institutional shareholders, is that in the event not all of the shares offered in the open offer are subscribed for by shareholders, they will seek to place any unsubscribed shares.

I think they're hoping that the shorts will take it up to cover. If not, the placing is underwritten for 1 million dollars, so at least the management get to keep paying their salaries. My opinion on Bahamas Petroleum remains the same. Wait and see if they actually can raise the funding for their drill and review the situation then.

Tower Resources, which I mentioned as a good bet on Wednesday, saw a decent amount of buying as a result with the share price firming up over 0.4 p. Tower is also issuing 50 million shares in lieu of fees and, with an admission of the first tranche of placing shares and the fee shares taking place on Monday, we could be seeing some of this stock hit the market next week. If the price comes back under 0.4 p, that could offer another good buying opportunity. Down at this level, I think the odds are probably very much in the buyer's favour.

Moving on, news from all the other companies who made announcements last week will be covered in the Sunday blog and I'll be back mid-week with another podcast focussed on whatever interesting looking news comes along in the meantime.