anyone got any ideas about the block trades that went through today?

website: http://www.sterlingenergyplc.com/



weather: www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at4+shtml/084938.shtml?50wind120

Ouch................!!!!

Gotcha!!!

Sorry about that folks, he hates having his foot squeezed!!

I got a lucky goldfish as well....................

He fights to get away when I hold him too.............

..........and then there's my cat who loves Exlax!

She lives outdoors!!

And a wife that snores.......

Just about every oil co is down.

MS

oil price back to $35 by end of Q1 nxt year

PT

I did'nt expect that. I thought a min of $40/45 for most of next year.

MS

just a feeling i have. i think the price will steadily come down in december and certainly be in the low 40's by mid jan. i know nothing but i just think that the mkt has been overheated and the longs out there, which i think are considerable, will start flipping when the latent demand is met and the political risks have abated. obviously all bets are off if there is another threatened major pipe line or terrorist attack.

i may be wrong (and often am) but i think the oil to US$60/70 /80 etc argument has run its course and we are going to reenter normalised pricing models.

Afternoon all,

Not been the greatest of 2 days here with the Merou news. Seems to have hit HNR much harder than us, would expect that with a bad well though. SWW, I read that you offered your apologies yesterday, none needed IMO.

Just found this in Killik's morning note:

"HARDMAN RESOURCES mechanical fault



The third piece of bad news from the Mauritanian partners has continued to impact sentiment and the stock price for Hardman Resources. The lead operator Woodside plans to suspend the Tiof-3 appraisal well because of operational difficulties. This follows yesterdays news that the Merou well (with an estimated 250-350 million boe) had sub-commercial accumulations.



The Tiof site has six appraisal wells underway and therefore in isolation, this current problem should be resolvable. Nevertheless, this further sentiment hit is reducing somewhat the exploration risk premium in the stock. The partners need some good news.



As an aside, the impact of this news should be neutral for Sterling Energy. It does have a royalty benefit from its relationship with Premier Oil but none of the costs associated with the drilling campaign. Its recent 97 million financing was used to back the Mauritanian Government into the Chinguetti field which is far more developed. Accepted that sentiment has moved against the partners short term, but Sterling represents the safest way to play this and we retain our buy recommendation."

Also, received this months monthly news letter from Hargreaves Hale via email. They still rate SEY as a buy over the short and long term.

proptrade - you might be interested to know that the Quwaiti oil minister said this morning that he believed the oil price should (and would) be nearer $30-35 a barrel early next year.

If oil falls to $30-35 where would that leave oil exploration. I suspect that in areas where exploration is not so difficult then extraction costs would still be well covered. But places like the Falklands where the margins are tighter might be a different story. Any views?

MS

Well all over for another day. A couple of large G&T's tonight. Not the greatest couple of days but that's the market.

MS

MS In exactly the same position it is now.

This resource is running out!

It may be uneconomic at certian times to extricate in difficultly located fields, but as has been shown with the price of gas, and Sterlings stranded Phillipine Field, everything will become possible.

Depenmds how old you are and if you are lucky enough to live to your investments expectations.

Oil & Gas is not usually a get rich quick stock, but long term, unless the Company is run by a numpty board, then it is pretty solid.

Once you have your DB garaged in a couple of years you may wish to switch your remaining staggering fortune to a Major just for reassurance. (I suspect PET may be amongst thoseyoumay wish to target, lol).

I will, but I will see where SEY are then before deciding to leave at least some in the Company.

15 is it almost here ???

Dave, this was never a short term gainer.

Patience and see what production brings.

Interims this month I think!

From ADVFN

As someone with experience in the sector can I make a few pointers to what the aims of the wells recently drilled would have been.

As I understand it Merou was a competely seperate feature from Tiof - the suggestion that they might be connected was pure hype that appeared over the weekend. Therefore it has no negative impact on Tiof. It seems that Merou did find oil, which widens the area of known oil occurances, within which prosepcts might be expected to have a chance of success. The problem according to the RNS's was that the reservoir rock was too thin. There may still be other parts of the Merou feature that have potential and the information gained by this well could allow Woodside to better direct a follow up well.

The general method in these areas of exploration is to first map the structural features using seismic. Woodside have spent a small fortune on 3D seismic in this area, so confidence on structure should be high. The uncertainty relates to the distribution of reservoir sands, and whilst the sesimic can be used to predict these, it is an inexact art, and we should expect failures such as Merou. Even in proven petroleum provinces such as the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, the success rates on exploration drilling are no better than 1 in 3. Which is what Woodside have delievered in this campaign: Tevet success followed by failure at Capitaine and Merou (ignoring Dorade as even Woodside were on record as saying this was a long shot, and SEY had no interest in it anyway). There will be many more wells drilled at no cost to SEY over the coming months, so it is way too soon to write off the potential of this area.

The problems with the testing of Tiof sound like the sort of routine but frustrating problems that face the industry all of the time - when you are trying to engineer a test 2000 metres below surface in a small tube of 9 in diameter or so, it is pretty common to run into difficulties. Thankfully, SEY has no exposure to the costs of these problems, so can afford to wait for the next free bus to come along. Premier and Hardman must be hurting however, as evidenced by the hit on their share prices.

Hope this helps.

More than happy to hold sw,one to tuck away.