Desire Petroleum

<>Desire Petroleum plc (Desire) is a UK company listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) dedicated to exploring for oil and gas in the North Falkland Basin.

Desire has recently completed a 6 well exploration programme. The Liz well encountered dry gas and gas condensate at 2 separate levels while other wells recorded shows.
Together with the Rockhopper Exploration Sea Lion oil discovery in the licence to the north, these wells have provided significant encouragement for the potential of the North Falkland Basin. The oil at Sea Lion is of particular interest as this has demonstrated that oil is trapped in potentially significant quantities in a fan sandstone on the east flank of the basin. It is believed that over 50% of this east flank play fairway is on Desire operated acreage.

Desire has now completed new 3D seismic acquisition which provides coverage over the east flank play, Ann, Pam and Helen prospects. The results from fast-track processing of priority areas are provided in the 2011 CPR. A farm-out to Rockhopper has been announced. The revised equities are shown on the licence map (subject to regulatory approval and completion of the farm-in well). Desire Petroleum

Rockhopper Exploration

British Geological Survey

Argos Resources



Latest Press Realeses from Desire

All Good Like FOGL ONE TO WATCH IN 2009 !!

Desire Petroleum plc

(the 'Company')


Holding in Company

The Company was notified on 14 July 2008 that, following an acquisition of Ordinary Shares on 9 July 2008, Barclays PLC has a notifiable interest in 5.01% of the issued share capital of the Company.


This information is provided by RNS
The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

http://www.smallcapnews.co.uk/article/Rock_star_Rockhopper_Exploration_plc/5359.aspx

Rock star: Rockhopper Exploration plc


Friday, July 18, 2008

Four years ago Sam Moody swapped his job as an investment manager in London to start a new life with his family in the Wiltshire countryside. But it wasnt long before his City expertise was being called upon again this time to lead an oil and gas venture 8,000 miles away in the south Atlantic ocean.

Today, the managing director of AIM-listed Rockhopper Exploration plc is talking over his companys next move in a chase to find oil in the Falkland Islands.

Earlier this summer Rockhopper began sounding out potential farm-in partners ahead of test drilling on its North Falkland Basin acreage. After four years of detailed surveying and scoping, the company is pondering whether or not to bring in big company help or opt to raise more cash through the City and do the drilling work itself. For Moody, its a delicate balance.

When youre a focused company like us the most important thing is to maximise shareholder value, he says. We cant lose sight of the fact that we dont have anything anywhere else in the world so the normal rules of spreading the risk dont apply to us in terms farming out.

What we will do over the next weeks and months is compare the relative merits of doing an industry deal with doing a deal in the equity markets. And until weve run the farm-out campaign for a bit longer we wont know what the answer is. But we do think that there will be money available in both camps.

Rock steady

It was during his migration to the countryside that Moody crossed the path of Richard Visick, an entrepreneur hed worked with on previous deals it was a chance meeting that set the course of the next four years.

Richard rang me up one day and said Im thinking about starting an oil exploration company, he says. I offered to help and somewhere along the line fell completely in love with the idea of oil exploration.

Moody was tasked with building a company around acreage that Visick had secured in the North Falkland Basin. Through a personal contact I found Pierre Jungels, the ex-chief exec of Enterprise Oil, to become chairman. We needed proper oil experience but it was Pierres idea that I stayed on with Rockhopper to run the company side of the business - as opposed to the technical side.

Running the company side means that I get the money, I make sure everything gets done and I deal with the stock market. But Ive learned a lot in the past five years about the oil industry.

Rockhopper's acreage lies to the north of the Falklands in an area with a history of oil discoveries. In 1998 Shell, Amerada Hess, Lasmo and IPC between them drilled six wells, five of which found oil or gas. One of the Shell wells, which is on acreage Rockhopper now holds, recovered live oil to the surface which bled in to the borehole of the well at its target depth of 3,000 metres.

So its true to say you know theres oil and gas down there, but you dont know whether you can ever commercialise it, Moody says. In 1998 the price of oil was $12 per barrel, in 1999 it fell to less than $10 per barrel and when youre in a remote location with little or no infrastructure in the late nineties you cant make it work at that oil price.

Now youve got a dramatic increase in the price of oil and gas, youve got much better and accurate exploration technology, youve got an increasing demand for oil, youve got a decreasing availability of high quality acreage in the world. So all of those things come together to make the Falklands look attractive again.

The rising oil price has changed things out of all recognition. If youd set this company up at $12 per barrel you would never have got anywhere. Were now at $130-plus per barrel and all of a sudden lots and lots of parts of the world that were never of interest before start to make sense. But the magic number for the North Falkland Basin, as opposed to the much deeper waters south and east of the Falkland Islands, is as low as $25 or $30 per barrel.

The question for us now is not whether there is oil in the North Falkland Basin, the question is whether you can find enough oil that flows quickly enough to commercialise it.

To try and answer that question Rockhopper has been relentless in surveying its acreage. Since 2004 it has conducted two 2D seismic surveys totalling around 1,500 sq km. Those were followed by 850 sq km of 3D seismic over the earlier Shell discovery, which at the time was the biggest 3D survey ever done in the Falklands. There have also been four controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM) lines.

All the work weve done in the past has led us to believe that there is a good chance of finding commercial hydrocarbons in the North Falklands basin, he says.

Of course theres no guarantee, but its a good starting point. What I would say is that at every stage of the exploration its just looked a little bit better than it did before. So weve been very pleased with the work that weve done.

With interpretation of the 3D seismic drawing to a close, Moodys team is now beginning to tackle the problem of how to pay for test wells. At IPO in the summer of 2005 the company was only ever funded to carry out seismic and other exploratory work over its acreage it was never funded to actually pay for the wells.

In terms of the farm-in programme, people are interested in looking at the data and some of those companies are of a pretty meaningful size but its just too early to say, Moody says.

Timescales? I think wed like to try and get something wrapped up by the end of this calendar year if possible. We will either choose to farm out or contract a rig and drill the wells ourselves with money from the City. Thats the current timetable.

Rock and roll

Moodys confidence in Rockhoppers capacity to raise cash is well founded as recently as May this year it propped up its working capital funds with a 3.6 million share placing. He believes a combination of factors help the City discern the quality of the various companies that it chooses to invest in.

If you look at the quality of the acreage that Rockhopper has got, the quality of the work that we have done, the quality of the board, it gives the City an extra hint of confidence in the company, he says.

Thats not to say it will definitely work, because you can never say that, but we think weve got a high quality offering with a good ratio of risk to reward. We think the City will be able to see that and our recent fundraising would demonstrate that to be the case.

That just leaves the question of a discovery. Again, Moody takes a balanced view relaxed on the prospect of either shifting gear and becoming a full production operation or selling to a bigger player.

At that point you would need to talk to shareholders, he says. It depends on where the moment of maximum value for shareholders is and that can either be at the moment of a discovery or when the first drop of oil is produced.

But he is also aware that Rockhopper is not alone even in the North Falkland Basin, where there are presently two other companies operating: AIM-listed Desire Petroleum plc and private operation Argos Evergreen Ltd. In the south and the east of the Falklands there is Falklands Oil & Gas Ltd and Borders & Southern Petroleum plc.

But Rockhopper has fared well in its time as a public company. Currently capitalised at around 53m, the company raised 15m on listing at 42p per share. The recent fundraising raised 3.8m at 101p per share.

I think the AIM market has worked pretty well for us and weve had a respectable share price performance, Moody says. Weve had good liquidity on our stock this year probably turning over about 50m shares in the market out of about 80m shares in issue.

Weve got better liquidity than a lot of AIM companies which is a pretty positive sign for us because some AIM companies can suffer from a lack of liquidity.

Weve done everything weve ever said we were going to do and a bit more, and I think thats what shareholders are looking for.

Ben Hobson, SmallCapNews.co.uk

http://www.fairplay.co.uk/login.aspx?reason=denied_empty&script_name=/secure/displayMagArticles.aspx&articlename=fpnw20080515009nw&phrase=phipps

ONE OF John Frederiksens companies is about to join the race to open up the vast oil reserves believed to be beneath the Falkland Islands.

Arcadia Petroleum is said to have reached a farm-in accord with Desire Petroleum, which has been exploring in the North Falkland Basin. The area is thought to contain more than 14Bn barrels of recoverable oil.

Arcadia is an oil trading and ship management company that belongs to the same group as other Frederiksen companies such as Frontline and Golar LNG. It has offices in London and Singapore.

Under the farm-in deal, Arcadia would pay to drill two wells that would be exploited jointly; Desire would use the same rig to drill another two wells on its own account.

Desire chairman Stephen Phipps told Fairplay that he could not comment on the deal until separate talks are completed with the Falklands government. He did say, however: We have yet to find a floating rig to do the drilling. Owing to the cost of the project, we may have to collaborate with some of the other companies drilling down there.

If workers find a rig and get it down to the South Atlantic, he would hope that drilling can begin before the end of 2008.

That would put his workers ahead of another partnership that is also exploring in the same region. Falkland Oil & Gas has come to a similar accord with BHP Billiton and hopes to begin drilling in 2010.

Desire was founded by Falkland business interests and has been searching for oil since 1996. Owing to the low cost of a barrel, extraction was then unfeasible.

But todays soaring oil cost has made it an attractive proposition: oil is trading about $120 a barrel.

This old news from May 2008

Keep pumping marky.

Was thinkling of you to day Halifax i saw a loaf of bread with the words thick cut on it.

lol......bread aint that thick surely, markymar

lol Scot,Halifax is a proper thicky hence he bought FOGL shares ....there is always one mug

Marky just to make you feel better I took my nice profit on FOGL at 149p as I didnt see any upside in Falkland oilies for another year as no rigs in sight. Dont understand how DES sp is so high as they havent delivered on their farm out rumour.
Never the less FOGL is by far the best bet with BHP/BLT as their partner. What have DES and RKP got so far just wind and...... and there is certainly plenty of that in the Falkland Islands.

Haifax you are a clown and you havent a clue whats going on,get back to reading your lady bird books and counting on your fingers.

marky if thats the best comment you can make you should be posting on the "Beano" website not on this BB which is used by, and intended for the use of serious investors.

Now wait till RAF r up to opp strength and of course a rig and as Rod says we'll be sailing

i know its early days.....anyone got an idea how far up desire could sail....i am thinking of toping up before it makes serious progress with rigs etc etc

hlyeo98 - 03 Jul 2008 13:10 - 2885 of 2908
Desire Petroleum is much too overvalued...it should be in the region of 20-30p only.

lol what a wally!!!

also halifax comment about just wind etc

thought there would be more comments on des today on this as this news removes a lot of the rumours on no news. good to see added acreage too

must be HUGE EMBARASSMENT TO DANIEL STEWART !!!! will they have any customers left by now anyway such is their woeful advice........one of their best advice was you have to drill to find oil.....fantastic!

I see Daniel steward have changed there stance on Desire am not to sure if this has been made official to Joe public but I have been given this by someone with in there ranks.

Price Review

Still cannot attach firm values and using Estimated Monetary Value (EMV) techniques is not appropriate, principally due to small companies not having the ability to add value across their entire asset bases in a timely or cost effective manner.

Without doubt this is an excellent deal from Desires perspective, Arcadia has connections to excellent O&G resources, so much so that we are amazed that it has not demanded operatorship. Even with this excellent deal we feel Desire is still a little bit over priced and note there is no more real event driven news until we get a date for drilling, as such we change our recommendation to HOLD and change our price to 60p based on the zero cost nature of the farm out but being fully aware that cash is still to be spent on the 2 Desire wells, clearly the next piece of news has to be a drilling date, but experience has shown this could be a considerable period.

For Rockhopper this is also positive news as it means they will be involved in a well if they of course exercise the option, although it will reduce its already low cash reserves. We await further news on its own acreage, and its intention to fulfill the farm in to Desires acreage. We change our recommendation to Hold and a 50p target.

Positive development, good partner with limited E&P experience but the right connections. Critically, we await definitive news on an indented drilling schedule.

Rockhopper (RKH.L) HOLD 50p (from SELL 40p)
Desire (DES.L) HOLD 60p (from Sell 40p)

lol.......its obvious daniel stewart know nothing about oil industry.

who r the cretins they employ......guys like tim heeley....sounds like a thick mick to me.
rig is most important news.....not drill date.......jes, they do get ahead of themselves daniel stewart.......arcadia will be good to get rig though......and i imagine they will have drill schedules set up depending on timing of rig.

also, rkh mentioned 2009 but des will be before rkh.........prev experience means damn all as market deals in future not in past........u just gota laugh at daniel stewart etc......wheres halifax and his wind

i dont think some of their clients will be pleased to read todays news if client sold cos of daniel stewart recommendation when sp hit 55p.........i imagine they must be getting lots of irate phone calls today........any more news like this and daniel stewart might need to get a real job in life

SHARES MAGAZINE

Sector Report:
Buy ICAP -- Tullett Prebon -- London Capital
Sell Blue Oar -- Cenkos Securities -- Daniel Stewart.

oh dear.....poor daniel stewart......any less in sp and it will be gone