http://www.gulfkeystone.com/ The firms exploration programme in Algeria is going well and "the shares look good value", say the Investors Chronicle. Your comments please. goal.

C&P

One of the most important announcements last week was the U.S decision to allow commercial flights to Kurdistan for the first time in over 16 yrs. Note that this does not extend to greater Iraq but just the 2 airports in Kurdistan.

that as may be, but US is already doing massive biz in southern iraq, regenerating the oilfields

Been buying GKP sub 190p. Quite a large position now.

Ready and primed for the massive ramping by the GKP ramping crew once the court case finishes.

of course you have, even though the case won't close until february

Which is why you buy now.

As the closing becomes nearer so more people will be buying in before the massive ramp occurs. Buy low - sell high.

As your stated holding price is 220p average (from old posts) I will be well into profit as you become close to breaking even.

Proselenes - 19 Nov 2012 14:17 - 2285 of 2382

Well cynic, you'll be pleased to know I am now taking a long break from the bulletin boards........ so you'll have to find someone else new to pick fights with.

Adios and have fun (and do not lose too much on Turdistan stocks !!)

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d93421e8-3ef7-11e2-9214-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz2EbO1kPKM

Richard Lowe faces a dilemma most oilmen can only dream about: what on earth is he to do with 14 billion barrels of crude?

Mr Lowe’s company, a small London-listed explorer called Gulf Keystone, found the oil in question in Shaikan, in Iraqi Kurdistan, in 2009. It was one of the world’s largest onshore discoveries in more than 20 years.

Stretching for miles under a ridge of brown, rugged hills near the Turkish border, Shaikan is huge. Yet its sheer size is problematic. “The big question is – where do you start?” says Mr Lowe, Gulf Keystone’s drilling manager. “The field is almost too big.”

Oil finds such as Shaikan have made Kurdistan, an autonomous region in the north of Iraq, one of the biggest draws in the global oil industry. It has attracted $10bn in investment from foreign oil companies – a vast amount for a country of only 4.9m people.

“It is almost the only place in the Middle East where the private sector can explore virgin territory,” says Tony Hayward, the former chief executive of BP who runs the Kurdistan-focused oil explorer Genel Energy.

Initially, the region was the playground of wildcatters – small buccaneers with a big appetite for risk. But now the big boys are moving in. Over the past year, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Total have been grabbing some of the 45bn barrels of oil thought to lie underneath Kurdistan.

Ashti Hawrami, Kurdistan’s minister of natural resources, forecasts a wave of consolidation as the majors swoop in. The number of operators in the region will, he says, soon shrink from 50 to 20 or less. “We’re moving from the small and the beautiful to the large and the magnificent,” he told the Financial Times.

The big oil companies are coming despite a somewhat precarious legal environment. For years, Kurdistan has been embroiled in a bitter dispute with Iraq’s central government over who owns the region’s oil. Baghdad says the Kurdistan Regional Government, or KRG, lacks the authority to sign contracts with western energy groups and has declared them illegal.

In April 2012, the KRG suspended crude shipments from the region in protest at Baghdad’s delays in disbursing $1.5bn owed to operators in Kurdistan.

Since then circumstances have improved. In August, the KRG restarted exports as a goodwill gesture and, a month later, the central government agreed to pay foreign companies what they were owed for their oil. The Kurdish authorities reciprocated by agreeing to increase exports.

The deal enabled Gulf Keystone to resume production at Shaikan after a near five-month hiatus. “It’s a huge relief that we’re able to start again,” says Mr Lowe. Some 30 tankers a day are loading up at Shaikan and taking its crude to local refineries.

The September agreement was extraordinary in that it seemed to acknowledge the legitimacy of KRG contracts. Mr Hawrami says Baghdad realised that the most important priority was to make sure oil flows were resumed in full – regardless of which companies were producing it under what contracts. The view was “now Kurdistan must export the oil and we need the revenue,” he says. “Any stranded oil is not to the benefit of Iraq.” He called the deal “a win-win”.

It is not hard to tell that Kurdistan is sitting on a bountiful resource. On the northern side of Gulf Keystone’s Shaikan field, Mr Lowe points visitors to crude oil oozing out of the limestone rock and dribbling down in dense black seeps.

Iraqi geologists knew about the area’s potential. “These fields should have been discovered 30 or 40 years ago,” says Mr Lowe. Leaving them untapped was, he says, part of a policy of neglect designed to keep the Kurdish population down. Instead, Iraq focused on the huge fields around Basra and Kirkuk.

That has redounded to the Kurds’ advantage. “If these oil reserves had been developed 30 years ago, all the benefit would have gone to Saddam Hussein and his family,” says an Erbil-based diplomat. “It’s the only time the Kurds have been thankful to Saddam for something.”

It was only after 2006, when Mr Hawrami was appointed minister, that Kurdistan’s oil industry really took off. He has been credited with creating Kurdistan’s oil sector – with its complex contractual and regulatory framework – from scratch.

“It’s an amazing achievement in difficult circumstances,” says one diplomat.

Unlike the oilfields of southern Iraq, which had export pipelines linked to the Gulf, Kurdistan’s were stranded, with no outlet to wider markets. The area was largely unexplored and there was confusion over whether they had the right to sign their own contracts.

But according to Mr Hawrami’s view of Iraq’s 2005 constitution, under which the country’s oil and gas was “owned by the people of Iraq in all the regions and governates”, they did. He started allocating blocks of exploration acreage in production-sharing agreements – contracts that offer oil companies the potential for handsome profits.

Initially, small companies took the bait but their success encouraged larger competitors. Mr Lowe says seven out of 10 exploration wells drilled in Kurdistan are commercially successful – a “strike rate” with few parallels.

As the oil companies’ presence expanded, Kurdistan changed – fast. In the early days, Erbil was a provincial backwater and, as in all of Iraq, power came on for only a couple of hours a day. The city had one decent hotel, the Sheraton, built in the late 1970s. It felt like a “Wild West frontier town”, recalls one oil engineer who lived there then.

Now it is booming. Planes full of businessmen fly into Erbil’s new international airport from Dubai, Vienna and Istanbul. Five-star hotels tower over a cityscape dotted with cranes and vast construction sites.

The pace of development will increase. In 2008, there were only three drilling rigs in Kurdistan. This year there are 24 and next year there will be 40. Production, at about 200,000 barrels a day, will reach 250,000 b/d next year. By 2015, Kurdistan hopes to be exporting 1m b/d.

To achieve that will need a major reconfiguration of the region’s export infrastructure. The current Baghdad-controlled pipeline is plagued by bottlenecks. Many believe that Kurdistan will build its own pipeline into Turkey, giving it full control over exports. If that happens, the KRG will receive oil revenues directly from Turkey, rather than via Baghdad.

This will give the KRG the economic independence many Kurds have long craved and build on the close relationship evolving between Kurdistan and its neighbour, Turkey.

“Kurdistan is going to emerge as a major contributor to global oil supplies by the end of this decade – possibly sooner,” says Mr Hayward.

From the house broker.

Mirabaud: Valuation update

We calculate a Core NAV for GKP of 153p/shr based on a DCF analysis of the Shaikan field (149p/shr), assuming gross recoverable oil resources of 3.43 bn bbls, plus corporate items including option proceeds (4p/shr) and net debt (-0.4p). In addition, we have ascribed a further 73p/shr of risked appraisal value to existing discoveries and 7p/shr of risked exploration upside. The end result is a Total NAV of 233p/shr using a US$85/bbl LT Brent price and a 12% discount rate, although we would stress that these parameters may prove to be too conservative in the event of a takeover.

A investors responce.

-------------------------------------------------

Recoverable resources of 3.43 billion barrels for Shaikan then.

So, Mirabaud are basing their calculations on a 25% RECOVERY FACTOR for Shaikan at present then, since the present 13.7 billion OIP (P50) x 25% = 3.43 billion barrels.

That sounds reasonable.... if slightly on the cautious side.

And if the recoverable resources from Shaikan = 3.43 billion....
this gives GKP a net WI of 54.4% x 3.43 billion = 1.87 billion barrels.

Still looking pretty good!

But then, Mirabaud have calculated Shaikan’s value at 149p per share.

With 876 million shares In issue, this means they are giving Shaikan a value of just £1.3 billion.

Hmmm.... If 1.87 billion barrels of recoverable resources attributable to GKP is worth only £1.3 billion …. Mirabaud is giving each barrel of oil recovered a value of just 70p!

Sounds unlikely!!

It wouldn't be so bad but Mirabaud has then ascribed a further 73p/shr of risked appraisal value to 'existing' discoveries.

What discoveries?

Sheikh Adi - 1.9 billion (P50) x 80% net WI = 1.52 billion barrels. And even at 25% RF that gives us just 380 million barrels recoverable.

Akri-Bijeel - 2.4 billion (P50) x 12.8% Net WI = 307 million barrels. And at 25% RF this would amount to 77 million barrels recoverable.

So, those existing discoveries amount to 380 million + 77 million barrels recoverable = 457 million barrels, yet are worth 73p per share.

Meanwhile, Shaikan's 1.87 BILLION recoverable (which is FOUR times the estimated total for AB & SA) is only worth TWICE as much (i.e 149p against 73p).

Very strange.

Mirabaud is somehow valuing Shaikan oil at only 70p per recoverable barrel, and assessing the rest, which has yet to be proved, at about 140p per barrel.

At the $85 per barrel they are also using, GKP would actually NET about $6.60 or £4 profit oil per barrel by my calculations.

And Mirabaud are supposed to be GKP's house broker. Why would they be de-ramping GKP to such an extent, I wonder?

Most peculiar indeed - and I thought that we were just up against Excalibur at the moment.

GLA, scaramouche

http://gkpinvestor.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=analysis&action=display&thread=1715

In responce to S Pickens attempt yo discredit JG,over a EMail being issued late(not true).


Simon Fisher ‏@simonfishybits

SP "I do not conduct myself as being slippery" Judge Clarke "I understand why he (JG) would think that, I indeed thought that myself"

From Iraq report.

BAGHDAD - Leaders in Baghdad are warning that American oil companies could be responsible for causing a civil war with the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region if they begin drilling in Iraq's disputed territories.

Both the central government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have deployed thousands of troops near the contested border between north and south, including land where the American companies ExxonMobil and Hunt Oil have agreed to drill for oil. In some areas, the opposing forces are l...

as mandy rice davies said, baghdad would say that wouldn't it

What will happen to the Kurds and to Al-Maliki when Assad falls, which he will and very soon?

Apparently he'll run out of dosh around next April or even sooner but i read tonite in the Telegraph that rebels are close to capturing the main power station that provides power to Damascus


'Indeed the conflict in Syria has made the resolution of Iraq’s internal disputes even more unlikely in the near future. The level of trust between the various parties was already at a minimum; and the conflict in Syria has only hardened positions. The Maliki government is responding to worries about Syria by towing a harder line. Meanwhile, most Sunni and Kurdish leaders feel that their hand will be strengthened by the outcome of the conflict in Syria. They prefer to await that outcome before returning to the negotiating table with Baghdad – or more ominously, the battlefield.'

Read more at Middle East Voices: http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2012/11/insight-iraqs-tensions-heightened-by-syria-conflict-96791/#ixzz2EyQvfAOA
Read more at Middle East Voices: http://middleeastvoices.voanews.com/2012/11/insight-iraqs-tensions-heightened-by-syria-conflict-96791/#ixzz2EyQvfAOA

http://gkpinvestor.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=analysis&action=display&thread=1720

Thanks to Bob5....


The Judge asked Todd "Who did Rex propose would issue warrants or Convertible Notes?" and Todd replied "From GKP. I can't comprehend why that should be. It's not appropriate"

Judge: "How were matters left...you'd been saying that funding was required by 6 December. Rex Wempen said he needed 6-8 months to come up with the funds to participate, you said you could do until the end of January, was that intended to be that if he could provide funds by the end of January he could participate?

Todd Kozel confirmed that was correct.

Judge: "And then?"

Todd Kozel: "He couldn't pay, he couldn't meet the 6th, he couldn't meet the end of January, then he asked for 6-8 months"

Judge: "Rex suggested a buy-out"

Todd Kozel: "What could I buy? There wasn't anything. Rex went away to think about what to do"

and then later to the Judge:

Todd Kozel: "The board would not accept a 6-8 month carry. We are a public company. It's preposterous. We can't buy out what Excalibur doesn't have"

Photo progress of the pipelines, it's all happening.

http://metrography.photoshelter.com/gallery/Taq-Taq-Khurmala-Oil-and-Erbil-Dohuk-Gas-Pipelines-KAR-Group/G0000AI1H8z3Ow24/C0000PR4E5Fus5Uo

Stock on Loan for GKP nearing 60 million shares.

Its being shorted to hell at the moment....... LOL. That could be one massive massive upside swing when the court case ends late Feb.



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