Bought into IVE this morning, purely on speculation only... small time though. Don't know much about them though ! in for a penny in for a pound and all that.
Got out of TPG (dead loss and falling away fast)

rf - you face the same problem at Nighthawk imo.

World will struggle to meet oil demand
By Carola Hoyos and Javier Blas in London

Published: October 28 2008 23:32 | Last updated: October 28 2008 23:32

Output from the worlds oilfields is declining faster than previously thought, the first authoritative public study of the biggest fields shows.

Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term demand. The effort will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are delayed.

future gas prices look to be moving up.latest deals around the world in CBM and gas pipe can only suggest growing demand

new artilce, click HERE

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Irvine Energy - Streamlined and refocused
by Stuart Watson


Its been a mixed six months or so since Proactive last looked at Irvine Energy. The AIM-quoted oil explorer has three projects, two based in Kansas and one in Oklahoma. As well as conventional oil and gas targets, its also hunting for shale gas and coal bed methane.


Change at the top


In early September, Aaron Close left his position as CEO of Irvine to pursue other opportunities. Doug Manner, who has been with Irvine since early

2007, took over Closes role moving from Non-Executive Chairman to Executive Chairman.
Manner has held many industry positions, most notably as CEO of Westside Energy which was an American Stock Exchange company that produced 6 million cubic feet of gas per day from the Barnett Shale in Texas. Sean Austin, a colleague of Manners at Westside, has also joined Irvine as Chief Financial Officer following Westsides merger with Crusader Energy earlier this year.


Its early days for the new management team but the emphasis for the moment appears to be on increasing near-term production and disposing of non-core areas across Irvines various leases.


The companys results for the six months to June showed sales of just 0.2m and no doubt shareholders will be hoping for substantially higher numbers for the second half of the year. As management is yet to flesh out the full detail of its plans, a recent note from Hardman Research contained no estimates for 2008 or 2009. But the analysts at Hardman said they were reassured with what they heard when speaking with management.


Funding is obviously top of most investors checklists at the moment. The cash for Irvines drilling plans over the next few years will come from a $50m development loan provided by GasRock Capital. This was concluded in May of this year at which time an initial drawdown of $6.1m was made, primarily to cover costs already incurred.


Going forward some equity funding may still be required though as the debt facility doesnt cover 3D seismic. Much of Irvines acreage hasnt been subject to 3D seismic in the past and its likely to be instrumental in unearthing new prospects. Irvine raised 1.1m via a small placing in July to cover its latest costs in this respect.


So whats been happening across the three project areas? Lets look at each in turn.


Kansas


The Kansas Project covering a net 112,000 acres is the largest in Irvines portfolio. 3D seismic has been shot over three areas where Irvine has a 75% working interest, called Rock, Ayres and Udal. To date, four wells have been drilled at Rock and one at Ayres. Two of the Rock wells were dry but the remaining three wells drilled in Kansas have all discovered hydrocarbons.
Although the first well, Rock 1-5, was initially expected to produce between 35 and 100 barrels of oil per day it is currently producing just 6. Irvine is making adjustments to the submersible pump to increase the flow rate.


There is no news yet about the flow rates for the other two successful wells, Rock 1-32 and Ayres 1-20, although the latter has been fracture stimulated and Irvine hopes to report on this in its next operational update.


Further wells are likely to follow in Kansas and this project area also hosts the Chattanooga Shale, which is an extension of the proven Woodford Shale in Arkansas and Oklahoma. Initial drilling to assess the size of this resource and its viability for commercial production had been expected by the end of 2008 but it remains to be seen what plans the new management team have for this prospect.


Niobrara


The Niobrara project consists about 5,000 acres in north-west Kansas. Here Irvine has 18 wells producing small quantities of gas and a 50% working interest. However, an extensive drilling programme of 40 new wells appears to have been delayed due to issues with gas compression and a pipeline leak that lowered production from the initial wells over the summer months. The problems appear to have been fixed now though and Irvine expects production from Niobrara to pick up again in the near future.


Oklahoma


Irvines 50,000 acre Oklahoma project appears to have had a little more luck. It already has 20 wells producing some gas while Priegel 3-10 is producing 12 barrels of oil per day from the lowest position on the Booch sandstone channel. Irvine reckons this indicates that the entire channel is charged with oil from the base. There are plans for 33 wells costing around $300,000 each to tap an estimated 1 million gross barrels of recoverable oil, although forced pooling could result in Irvines working interest being reduced to 25%.


The Oklahoma project also contains the Woodford and Caney Shale which were estimated earlier this year to hold a contingent resource of 238 billion cubic feet of gas by Netherland, Sewell & Associates. One horizontal and one vertical well have been drilled on the Woodford Shale since then. This should begin the process of converting this resource into a reserve, which can then be added to the 10.25 billion cubic feet of P1-P3 reserves already identified in Kansas and Niobrara. The horizontal Woodford well, Jones 1-5H, has had a successful frac treatment and flow rates should be available in a few weeks.


Finally, four targets have been identified in the Hartshorne coal bed methane prospect, which is also part of the Oklahoma project. Drilling personnel have been identified and the approval process is underway so we should see some drillbit action here in the relatively near future.
Irvines shareholders are a little bit in limbo at the moment while the new management team reassesses its project plans. But it has a wide range of attractive prospects and access to a decent slab of funding.

Both these bode well for the future.

cbm/gas lot of action/deals lately. big money.that could be a big future for us and ive!!!

other companies seem to have been having success in the woodford shale areas and ours seems to be progressing niceley......

From Penn Virginia Corporation.......

In the third quarter of 2008, we participated in three (0.5 net) non-operated horizontal Woodford Shale wells in the Arkoma Basin, producing at initial rates of approximately 3.6, 4.6 and 2.7 MMcfe per day (working interests of 11, 31 and 13 percent, respectively). Based on the encouraging results of the five Woodford Shale wells in which we have participated to date, we plan to continue to participate in the drilling of additional wells in the near term in the Arkoma Basin. Our internally generated Woodford Shale prospect in the Anadarko Basin will be tested during the fourth quarter of 2008.

and from our side as we know.........

The company is now beginning to test the potential of the shale in that it has completed the multistage fracture of its first horizontal Woodford shale well Jones 1-5H in Oklahoma. It is understood that the fracs took sand and fluid very well. Two stages (the higher stress zones) took frac fluid but not sand. Practically speaking, some of the better shale gas wells turn out to be the ones that will not take sand, only fluid. The engineers believe that good well penetration was achieved on all of the frac stages and at the end of the day this first horizontal test well is encouraging.

A penny for your thoughts........?

Operational update out this morning.

It looks bad. Very disappointing,,, cost overuns, more cash needed etc...not much good news in terms of output...now we know why the sp has not performed well and it might take a hammering today...(imho) sub 1p beckons...

Hi skyhigh, yes sub one penny however it would help if it could stay above should any placing be needed.

Price of gas does not help as I previously said.

There are far better small companies around than this.

This company only gets significance thr' the ramping on these and other boards.

If and I say If some of these tiddlers are going to the wall then IVE will be one of the first there.

All IMO

Not worth selling as my small batch of shares are not worth much now..
So will hang on and hope for the best..

Wonderful share tip this one.....lucky for me : I bailed out.....for share tips the best thing is to follow some of the bloggers on here......they will not get it right everytime but there is a heck of a lot of experience and good comments on MoneyAM !, tiddlers have taken a beating this year.....for the oil and gas : best to buy those producing or are very near production !.

Don't do what I did with EO. and hope for a rebound with this one !.

Very to the point required field.

I agree, and this one will end up with far too much paper in the end.

my 800 now worth 137. will wait a few to see if any bounce. sold my AIMR too quick following bad news.
Alex
:(

john50 and kuzemko,

Shame about those newspaper reporters, they had probably only just left school.

Added a few over sold IMO.

so what have IVE said today.....

1)3D and operational costs have gone over budget?
how much over. have they not agreed this before hand and why were they not noticed before they were incurred?...... Is it down to the operator? Is it down to Irvines management? someone is to blame and who?

2)Gasrock have held the facility back until Irvine 'shape up'...

from the RNS 'This is likely to involve varying the terms of the facility and result in an increase in the production override payable by the Company to GasRock'

So Gasrock are willing to deal with Irvine but want more royalties as production isnt as anticipated. From the above it looks as though it could be virtually agreed as Irvine are already aware that Gasrock will require more royalites so the conversation has been had and its the terms that need ammending.

3)from the RNS 'As a consequence of these circumstances, the Company may need to raise additional finance and the directors are considering all options
including and not limited to, equity or debt finance, further asset sales or a strategic investment'.

If it is purely related to the 3D siesmic and operational costs, a placing could occur. Again what are these operational costs? where have they came from? didn't the $50 million finance cover this?

4)'equity or debt finance/strategic finance', although not ruled out, why is it mentioned? are they being precausious incase they didn't get the $50 millino facility back? - the directors are considering all option INCASE? although to me subject to agreeing to give more money to GasRock, we should be ok.

5)Coal Bed Methane. Reserves show there is an asset there. What is the impact on the SP (all other things being normal) that this would have?

6)Asset sales - 'The Company is in discussion with a number of parties regarding potential asset disposals' - Irvine do have attractive assets in some good locations. Out of the number of people in talks, one may make an offer, even a dirty one, IVE will take it, get some money in the bank, pay over run costs and continue with business as usual (subject to 1 less asset)

Operations

7)Jones 1-5H has been hooked up and ready to record sales - imminent - if good, another asset is producing and value can start to be realised.

8)Priegel 3-10 - Producing 2 BOPD, not 12. We need more info as to what is happening here and why the figure has decreased. Plans for field development are underway so its still in progress.

9)'In Kansas, the Ayres 1-20 well is currently shut-in waiting on completion of a tank battery, upon which oil sales will commence' another asset about to produce imminently. although at what amounts.

10)Kansas Rock wells - Mr close said they should produce 35-100+ barrels per well, a plan from what I remember is being drawn to increase this and bring in pumps. Why was a figure of 35-100+ given without further evidence it is true?

11)Naibrara - producing but had problems, again rates are not known and why? have these problems settled?

12)'The Udal 3D seismic shoot is currently being processed and the Ayres 3D shoot is currently being mapped for additional Bartlesville locations'. Both suggest the locations being looked at make IVE feel confident they will continue to be in business as normal and they have located targets to expand therefore confident the Gasrock Facility will come back.

So what do I conclude from all the above. Today was a shock, following the interims and I qoute 'Finally, I'd like to thank all those involved in these efforts and our shareholders for their support. I look forward to a bright future for Irvine Energy'. Doug Manner, Chairman, 29 September 2007.

Did he not know about the problems in the pipeline and if not why not? isn't he suppossed to be on top of things? why wasn't he, an answer should be required by shareholders, its not acceptable.

Other questions I have would be why are shareholders not being given production rates? is it becuase of days like today? why and when are we going to have production rates for Niabrara? why were we told in the interims etc that Ive expect production rates and income to increase? where did they get this information? was it plucked out of the air? or based on results we have yet to see?

The problem is we have a lot of assets, a great deal of potential, the facility will come back I am sure based on what they mentioned above regarding better royalty terms. Gasrock have spent on IVE and want that back. Why have IVE always over promised and under delivered? Is that why Mr Close went? it would make sense now why he was asked to leave. why else would he be asked to go? IVE did the right thing to get rid of him. I feel Michael Frayne is a man out to do business, was all of this noticed and now was forced to come out in the open? after all, MF and Co, didn't over promise with Preigle they said 12 BOPD, 2 is less but not really a great deal different compared to Mr Close with 35-100+ and it turns out to be piddle.

Irvine, you have over promised and under delivered. If you read this board, I hope you take heed of what I am saying. We have been loyal for a long time now and have invested money some cannot afford to lose from what I have seen. We no longer want possible production figures pulled out of the sky, we want real figures and for assets such as Niabrara we want them now. We want to know about Ayres Figures, we are investors and want to know what we invest in. We want action now.

I feel that in light of todays events, some of it seems to be very bad for the management to say heres to a bright future with lots of increased production and then to say nothing more on the subject. we no longer want RNS's to say more news in coming weeks, which turns into months, we want better/more realistic timetables otherwise do not give them. we want those responsible to be held accountable. They shouldn't be allowed to give us pipe talk and the facts turn out different and we want EVO to be banished for good as they talk up a good story yet come out as the house broker in an unprofessional way and say it is a major blow to IVE. That is not very professional of a company you pay monies to.

In the end, we have all been shocked by todays events but I am sure the funding issues will get sorted. Again, we have good assets, shale on the books possibly now, we just dont want anymore bullshit, no more made up figures, we want facts, figures, presented and an answer as to why Doug Manner said the future is bright, 4 weeks ago.

I am sure it will all sort itself out. I will buy more when I can, I hope and think that no Mr Close is gone (scapegoat or not) we can move forward but deserve better treatment along the way. I have a feeling we will now get this from Michael Frayne.

Its anyone choice to invest or not. Many invested on Mr Closes lies. MF, DM and Co. It's upto you to make us remember why we invested in Irvine once more.

I am sure things will sort themselves out and I have this as a buy in my books. Our assets are worth more than the SP alone. Time for action jackson.

Good luck to us all.

Great post fatgreek.

Good luck.