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Gulf Keystone Petroleum (GKP)
goal
- 15 Mar 2005 17:17
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.
niceonecyril - 01 Feb 2015 21:46 - 5127 of 5505
BAGHDAD / .. A member of the parliamentary Commission on oil and energy
MP Ali Qubool Bahadli, Saturday,said the next week will provide oil and
gas law to the Presidency of the Parliament to be presented to the House
of Representatives to read it and vote on it.
Bahadli said, in a statement to “Ein Iraq News,” that the budget of
the most basic projects carried out during the current legislative term,
which is the foundation for the rest of important laws, an approval is a
significant milestone.
Bahadli said that the Committee on Energy placed a priority project
of oil and gas law in addition to the establishment of the Iraqi
National Oil Company, as both are linked to one another.
He stressed that week following the legislative recess Committee will
draft oil and gas law to the presidency of the parliament to be viewed
by the Council of Representatives to read it twice, edited it and then
vote approval.
Ayn Al Iraq News
MP Ali Qubool Bahadli, Saturday,said the next week will provide oil and
gas law to the Presidency of the Parliament to be presented to the House
of Representatives to read it and vote on it.
Bahadli said, in a statement to “Ein Iraq News,” that the budget of
the most basic projects carried out during the current legislative term,
which is the foundation for the rest of important laws, an approval is a
significant milestone.
Bahadli said that the Committee on Energy placed a priority project
of oil and gas law in addition to the establishment of the Iraqi
National Oil Company, as both are linked to one another.
He stressed that week following the legislative recess Committee will
draft oil and gas law to the presidency of the parliament to be viewed
by the Council of Representatives to read it twice, edited it and then
vote approval.
Ayn Al Iraq News
niceonecyril - 01 Feb 2015 21:51 - 5128 of 5505
Sunday Times article
mment (0)
Print
The drop in oil prices has burnt investors The drop in oil prices has burnt investors
Kevin Broger had quite a yarn to tell. The Canadian geologist was involved in Brazil’s oil boom in the early 2000s, when explorers discovered vast quantities of the black stuff trapped 20,000ft beneath the sea floor. Namibia, he reckoned, could be next.
Before the Pangea landmass broke apart 200m years ago, Brazil and the arid southern African nation were neighbours, and their present-day geology is strikingly similar.
Based on that logic, Chariot Oil & Gas, the company Broger ran, claimed its exploration blocks across the Atlantic also “may hold significant hydrocarbon accumulations”.
It was not an iron-clad investment proposition, but punters piled in regardless. When Chariot floated in May 2008, it raised £45m to drill some wells and find out. The company was worth £184m.
Chariot has been a disaster. Broger left a year after the listing. The company raised another £129m in three subsequent fundraisings, pulled off a couple of strategic pivots and went through two more chief executives. For all its efforts it has nothing to show but dry holes and hope.
On Friday its shares closed at 7½ p, or 94% below the offer price. Late last year it relinquished rights to a pair of its Namibian licences.
Chariot is not alone. The collapse of the oil price from $114 a barrel in the summer to nearer $47 last week has thrown it, and the rest of the UK’s 120 or so listed explorers, into a life-or-death crisis.
Since 2008 — the last time the price of crude plummeted — the explorers and producers below the big three of BP, Shell and BG have raised $24.8bn (£16.5bn) through 347 stock market floats and follow-on offerings, according to figures compiled by Dealogic.
That mountain of cash underlined the primacy of the City of London as the place to go for prospectors in need of funding, legal advice and everything else that goes into hunting for oil in the modern world. The money was used to fund campaigns from the North Sea to east Africa, in the iceberg-strewn waters of Greenland and on the pampas of Argentina.
The returns, with a few glaring exceptions, have been abysmal. The oil and gas index for AIM, the junior market where most explorers are traded, has dropped 60% over five years. The FTSE 350 oil index, comprised of the largest groups, has fallen 8% in the same period.
Dividends have been almost non-existent. Cairn Energy’s £2.2bn special dividend in 2012 after its blockbuster find in India is a notable exception. Only eight other listed explorers have made payouts since 2008: they were “vanishingly small”, totalling just £1.3bn, according to Justin Cooper of Capita Asset Services.
Nearly half the listed explorers (55) do not even have oil reserves on their books. In other words, they don’t produce oil, nor do they plan to. They simply exist on the hope that, at some point, they will be able to drill a well and find some. But that requires money.
In a new world of rock-bottom crude prices, investors have little interest in throwing good money after bad. A whole swathe of the sector, which makes up 13% of the entire London market, faces going bust or simply being starved to death over the longer term.
One City fund manager said he was pulling out of the sector entirely. “There has been an incredible run of bad drilling results. This is a complicated business. A lot more complicated than I thought,” he said.
The crunch will force fundamental and painful changes through every layer of the exploration industry, including in the City. Philip Lambert, head of Lambert Energy Advisory, said: “Oil courses through the veins of London, and will continue to do so. But given the amount of money raised, and the returns that have been generated, the UK [oil exploration] sector will now have to positively reinvent itself.”
The question is: which companies are going to be claimed by the chaos?
A GOOD WAY to hunt for the vulnerable is to analyse “liquidity”, or how much cash a company has to pay its bills.
Afren is an extreme case. Last summer the Nigerian producer was worth £1.4bn and generating boatloads of cash from its reservoirs in Africa’s biggest country. Then it all began to unravel. Its chief executive was fired over a pay scandal. The company wrote down to zero its biggest acquisition, a $588m field in Kurdistan. And the oil price cratered.
The biggest bombshell came this month when its stand-in chief executive warned that despite having $235m in cash, Afren may not able to make a $50m loan payment and may need to raise money “in excess of the current market capitalisation”. On Friday, shares in the company, which is in rescue takeover talks with rival Seplat, were priced at 5.3p, valuing it at £59m.
On the face of it, the crunch made no sense. Balance sheets, however, can be deceiving. To obtain government approval for developments, companies are usually required to commit to drilling a minimum number of wells or hitting project milestones by a certain time.
In an industry where costs have soared — one deep-water well can cost $100m or more — a single commitment can mean that most or all of a developer’s money is spoken for, even if it has not been spent yet.
Bonds and loans, meanwhile, are based on an assumed oil price, revisited on a half-yearly or annual basis. When the crude price falls far and fast, it does two things. It hollows out turnover and can also make companies breach their loan agreements.
That is how solvent companies can suddenly find themselves in crisis, not unlike homeowners forced to remortgage after a 50% cut in both their salary and the value of their house.
A rival executive said: “The Afren statement was when the penny dropped for a lot of investors. Liquidity crises can come on incredibly quickly.”
To make matters worse, few companies have built up goodwill with their investors. The industry is notorious for wildly overpaying their executives. So now, when they are most in need, investors have little inclination to bail them out.
Another company that traders have zeroed in on is Gulf Keystone, a former high-flyer whose shares have also dived.
The company generates a fair amount of cash, producing 40,000 barrels a day from its fields in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. But it is lumbered with a huge debt pile, dwindling cash and a $54m annual interest bill.
In April, Gulf Keystone must pay half of that — $27m. As of last year, its cash pile had fallen to $90m. It had committed to spending $159m this year to develop a new field, Akri-Bijeel, but is likely to slash that.
Its biggest customer, the Kurdish regional government, owes it more than $100m in payments but is struggling to fund a war against Isis (also known as Islamic State) and support 1.5m refugees who have flooded across its borders.
Without a cash infusion, Gulf Keystone may struggle to make its payments, which is why one of its bonds dropped to 60p in the pound. Creditors are braced for the worst.
BACKING explorers has always been about betting on a team believed to have the best chance of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. A few have succeeded in recent years — Ophir Energy in east Africa, Tullow Oil in Ghana, Genel Energy in Kurdistan — and could yet be scooped by opportunistic buyers. But most fail.
That has always been the case. The problem is that in recent years succeeding has become far harder. Costs have rocketed. An offshore engineer makes $120,000 a year on average — twice what he did a decade ago. With much of the “easy oil” found, prospectors have been forced into more difficult — and costly — regions.
Yet Big Oil slammed on the spending brakes. Shell said last week it will cut $15bn from investment over the next three years. That will trickle through to the rest of the industry. Already salaries are being cut and workers are being laid off. Drilling-rig rates have halved. The correction has begun. “The sector doesn’t work at $50 a barrel, let alone $44,” said Barclays’ analysts. “Balance sheet strength remains the focus.”
The problem is that for most of London’s listed oil companies, their balance sheet is their weakness.
mment (0)
The drop in oil prices has burnt investors The drop in oil prices has burnt investors
Kevin Broger had quite a yarn to tell. The Canadian geologist was involved in Brazil’s oil boom in the early 2000s, when explorers discovered vast quantities of the black stuff trapped 20,000ft beneath the sea floor. Namibia, he reckoned, could be next.
Before the Pangea landmass broke apart 200m years ago, Brazil and the arid southern African nation were neighbours, and their present-day geology is strikingly similar.
Based on that logic, Chariot Oil & Gas, the company Broger ran, claimed its exploration blocks across the Atlantic also “may hold significant hydrocarbon accumulations”.
It was not an iron-clad investment proposition, but punters piled in regardless. When Chariot floated in May 2008, it raised £45m to drill some wells and find out. The company was worth £184m.
Chariot has been a disaster. Broger left a year after the listing. The company raised another £129m in three subsequent fundraisings, pulled off a couple of strategic pivots and went through two more chief executives. For all its efforts it has nothing to show but dry holes and hope.
On Friday its shares closed at 7½ p, or 94% below the offer price. Late last year it relinquished rights to a pair of its Namibian licences.
Chariot is not alone. The collapse of the oil price from $114 a barrel in the summer to nearer $47 last week has thrown it, and the rest of the UK’s 120 or so listed explorers, into a life-or-death crisis.
Since 2008 — the last time the price of crude plummeted — the explorers and producers below the big three of BP, Shell and BG have raised $24.8bn (£16.5bn) through 347 stock market floats and follow-on offerings, according to figures compiled by Dealogic.
That mountain of cash underlined the primacy of the City of London as the place to go for prospectors in need of funding, legal advice and everything else that goes into hunting for oil in the modern world. The money was used to fund campaigns from the North Sea to east Africa, in the iceberg-strewn waters of Greenland and on the pampas of Argentina.
The returns, with a few glaring exceptions, have been abysmal. The oil and gas index for AIM, the junior market where most explorers are traded, has dropped 60% over five years. The FTSE 350 oil index, comprised of the largest groups, has fallen 8% in the same period.
Dividends have been almost non-existent. Cairn Energy’s £2.2bn special dividend in 2012 after its blockbuster find in India is a notable exception. Only eight other listed explorers have made payouts since 2008: they were “vanishingly small”, totalling just £1.3bn, according to Justin Cooper of Capita Asset Services.
Nearly half the listed explorers (55) do not even have oil reserves on their books. In other words, they don’t produce oil, nor do they plan to. They simply exist on the hope that, at some point, they will be able to drill a well and find some. But that requires money.
In a new world of rock-bottom crude prices, investors have little interest in throwing good money after bad. A whole swathe of the sector, which makes up 13% of the entire London market, faces going bust or simply being starved to death over the longer term.
One City fund manager said he was pulling out of the sector entirely. “There has been an incredible run of bad drilling results. This is a complicated business. A lot more complicated than I thought,” he said.
The crunch will force fundamental and painful changes through every layer of the exploration industry, including in the City. Philip Lambert, head of Lambert Energy Advisory, said: “Oil courses through the veins of London, and will continue to do so. But given the amount of money raised, and the returns that have been generated, the UK [oil exploration] sector will now have to positively reinvent itself.”
The question is: which companies are going to be claimed by the chaos?
A GOOD WAY to hunt for the vulnerable is to analyse “liquidity”, or how much cash a company has to pay its bills.
Afren is an extreme case. Last summer the Nigerian producer was worth £1.4bn and generating boatloads of cash from its reservoirs in Africa’s biggest country. Then it all began to unravel. Its chief executive was fired over a pay scandal. The company wrote down to zero its biggest acquisition, a $588m field in Kurdistan. And the oil price cratered.
The biggest bombshell came this month when its stand-in chief executive warned that despite having $235m in cash, Afren may not able to make a $50m loan payment and may need to raise money “in excess of the current market capitalisation”. On Friday, shares in the company, which is in rescue takeover talks with rival Seplat, were priced at 5.3p, valuing it at £59m.
On the face of it, the crunch made no sense. Balance sheets, however, can be deceiving. To obtain government approval for developments, companies are usually required to commit to drilling a minimum number of wells or hitting project milestones by a certain time.
In an industry where costs have soared — one deep-water well can cost $100m or more — a single commitment can mean that most or all of a developer’s money is spoken for, even if it has not been spent yet.
Bonds and loans, meanwhile, are based on an assumed oil price, revisited on a half-yearly or annual basis. When the crude price falls far and fast, it does two things. It hollows out turnover and can also make companies breach their loan agreements.
That is how solvent companies can suddenly find themselves in crisis, not unlike homeowners forced to remortgage after a 50% cut in both their salary and the value of their house.
A rival executive said: “The Afren statement was when the penny dropped for a lot of investors. Liquidity crises can come on incredibly quickly.”
To make matters worse, few companies have built up goodwill with their investors. The industry is notorious for wildly overpaying their executives. So now, when they are most in need, investors have little inclination to bail them out.
Another company that traders have zeroed in on is Gulf Keystone, a former high-flyer whose shares have also dived.
The company generates a fair amount of cash, producing 40,000 barrels a day from its fields in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. But it is lumbered with a huge debt pile, dwindling cash and a $54m annual interest bill.
In April, Gulf Keystone must pay half of that — $27m. As of last year, its cash pile had fallen to $90m. It had committed to spending $159m this year to develop a new field, Akri-Bijeel, but is likely to slash that.
Its biggest customer, the Kurdish regional government, owes it more than $100m in payments but is struggling to fund a war against Isis (also known as Islamic State) and support 1.5m refugees who have flooded across its borders.
Without a cash infusion, Gulf Keystone may struggle to make its payments, which is why one of its bonds dropped to 60p in the pound. Creditors are braced for the worst.
BACKING explorers has always been about betting on a team believed to have the best chance of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. A few have succeeded in recent years — Ophir Energy in east Africa, Tullow Oil in Ghana, Genel Energy in Kurdistan — and could yet be scooped by opportunistic buyers. But most fail.
That has always been the case. The problem is that in recent years succeeding has become far harder. Costs have rocketed. An offshore engineer makes $120,000 a year on average — twice what he did a decade ago. With much of the “easy oil” found, prospectors have been forced into more difficult — and costly — regions.
Yet Big Oil slammed on the spending brakes. Shell said last week it will cut $15bn from investment over the next three years. That will trickle through to the rest of the industry. Already salaries are being cut and workers are being laid off. Drilling-rig rates have halved. The correction has begun. “The sector doesn’t work at $50 a barrel, let alone $44,” said Barclays’ analysts. “Balance sheet strength remains the focus.”
The problem is that for most of London’s listed oil companies, their balance sheet is their weakness.
niceonecyril - 01 Feb 2015 21:57 - 5129 of 5505
hxxp://basnews.com/en/economy/2015/02/01/kurdish-mp-in-baghdad-erbil-baghdad-oil-issue-resolved/.
Kurdish MP in Baghdad: Erbil – Baghdad Oil Issue Resolved
Exported Kurdish oil will be measured annually, not daily
Basnews | Biryar Koyi views
01.02.2015 16:27
Erbil and Baghdad solve oil issues
ERBIL
A Kurdish Member of the Baghdad Parliament says that recent issues with the agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] and Iraqi federal government have been resolved.
MP Najiba Najib told BasNews, “Over the last week, there have been some disagreements about how to measure the amount of oil to be exported by the KRG through the State Oil Marketing Organization [SOMO] mechanism. However, the original agreement of 550,000 barrels per day [bpd] remains in place”.
“The State of Law Coalition in the Iraqi parliament wanted exports to be registered daily rather than annually but they failed to get this through the 2015 budget.”
“The Iraqi budget will measure exports annually. So, the KRG shall export oil and Baghdad will send the region its share of the budget,” said Najib.
The KRG will not be able to export 300,000 bpd from Kurdistan oil and 250,00 from Kirkuk through SOMO for a few months, until it honours debts to oil companies.
Once the debts are settled, the KRG can address the shortfall of previous months, working within the agreement of annual measurement.
Kurdish MP in Baghdad: Erbil – Baghdad Oil Issue Resolved
Exported Kurdish oil will be measured annually, not daily
Basnews | Biryar Koyi views
01.02.2015 16:27
Erbil and Baghdad solve oil issues
ERBIL
A Kurdish Member of the Baghdad Parliament says that recent issues with the agreement between the Kurdistan Regional Government [KRG] and Iraqi federal government have been resolved.
MP Najiba Najib told BasNews, “Over the last week, there have been some disagreements about how to measure the amount of oil to be exported by the KRG through the State Oil Marketing Organization [SOMO] mechanism. However, the original agreement of 550,000 barrels per day [bpd] remains in place”.
“The State of Law Coalition in the Iraqi parliament wanted exports to be registered daily rather than annually but they failed to get this through the 2015 budget.”
“The Iraqi budget will measure exports annually. So, the KRG shall export oil and Baghdad will send the region its share of the budget,” said Najib.
The KRG will not be able to export 300,000 bpd from Kurdistan oil and 250,00 from Kirkuk through SOMO for a few months, until it honours debts to oil companies.
Once the debts are settled, the KRG can address the shortfall of previous months, working within the agreement of annual measurement.
niceonecyril - 05 Feb 2015 08:33 - 5130 of 5505
n1ckb 5 Feb'15 - 07:18 - 399325 of 399330 3 0
"Our focus in 2015 is to align our spending with our earning," said Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, DNO's Executive Chairman. "We are targeting operating efficiencies, cutting back on discretionary expenditures and high-grading our portfolio - a process we started late last year," he said. "We are also looking to generate larger revenues from our Kurdistan operations," he added.
The Company has restarted sales of oil into the Kurdistan local market and plans to ramp up such deliveries in the first quarter. The Company expects to realize additional payments in respect of past and ongoing exports, the timing and extent of which will drive the 2015 capital program. Mr. Mossavar-Rahmani repeated that DNO continues to have one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake.
From DNO todayhttp://www.investegate.co.uk/dno-asa/gnw/dno-asa---dno-asa-reports-2014-results/20150205070120H1955/
"Our focus in 2015 is to align our spending with our earning," said Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, DNO's Executive Chairman. "We are targeting operating efficiencies, cutting back on discretionary expenditures and high-grading our portfolio - a process we started late last year," he said. "We are also looking to generate larger revenues from our Kurdistan operations," he added.
The Company has restarted sales of oil into the Kurdistan local market and plans to ramp up such deliveries in the first quarter. The Company expects to realize additional payments in respect of past and ongoing exports, the timing and extent of which will drive the 2015 capital program. Mr. Mossavar-Rahmani repeated that DNO continues to have one foot on the accelerator and one on the brake.
From DNO todayhttp://www.investegate.co.uk/dno-asa/gnw/dno-asa---dno-asa-reports-2014-results/20150205070120H1955/
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 08:46
- 5131 of 5505
what is the link between DNO and GKP other than Kurdistan?
by the way, who are DNO? ..... i thought it was Dana Oil, but apparently not
by the way, who are DNO? ..... i thought it was Dana Oil, but apparently not
Balerboy
- 05 Feb 2015 08:51
- 5132 of 5505
Wheres your board thread gone cynic??
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 08:53
- 5133 of 5505
which one?
niceonecyril - 05 Feb 2015 08:54 - 5134 of 5505
HTTP://www.iii.co.uk/tv/episode/will-gulf-keystone-be-taken-over
href="http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/776/bijan_mossavarrahmani.html">http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/776/bijan_mossavarrahmani.html
Link,would be the production and payment(or should i say non-payment) of revenues.
href="http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/776/bijan_mossavarrahmani.html">http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/experts/776/bijan_mossavarrahmani.html
Link,would be the production and payment(or should i say non-payment) of revenues.
Balerboy
- 05 Feb 2015 08:57
- 5135 of 5505
the indicies thread (can't spell this time in morning)
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 08:58
- 5136 of 5505
let me look
HARRYCAT
- 05 Feb 2015 08:58
- 5137 of 5505
DNO is Dana Petroleum but it is owned by a Korean parent company called SINOPEC, so Dana itself doesn't trade on the LSE.
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 09:00
- 5138 of 5505
ah the dreaded Sinopec, also linked to Sinochem and of course effectively a Chinese gov't entity
HARRYCAT
- 05 Feb 2015 09:01
- 5139 of 5505
Sorry, correction to that......Not SINOPEC but KNOC.
niceonecyril - 05 Feb 2015 09:05 - 5140 of 5505
https://www.dno.no/about-dno/
DNO is a Norwegian exploration and production company focused on the Middle ... The company was founded in 1971 and is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
DNO is a Norwegian exploration and production company focused on the Middle ... The company was founded in 1971 and is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 09:06
- 5141 of 5505
link doesn't work but no matter
even so, what's the connection between DNO and GPK? .... little to none as far as i can determine
even so, what's the connection between DNO and GPK? .... little to none as far as i can determine
HARRYCAT
- 05 Feb 2015 09:22
- 5142 of 5505
HARRYCAT
- 05 Feb 2015 09:23
- 5143 of 5505
So DNO has nothing to do with Dana then cyril???? Ahem!!!!!!!!!!! ;o)
niceonecyril - 05 Feb 2015 09:25 - 5144 of 5505
GKP,DNO,MOL -and GENL all have a stake in Kurdistan and are producing large amounts of oil for export.With ICG and the KRG at loggerheads over payments (sorted now) but the co.s still are waiting for their share by the KRG.
They are also selling to the local market giving them some revenue (not a lot),so the
any ref to payment gives some idea as to whats happening?
They are also selling to the local market giving them some revenue (not a lot),so the
any ref to payment gives some idea as to whats happening?
cynic
- 05 Feb 2015 10:07
- 5145 of 5505
in other words, any link is very tenuous
niceonecyril - 05 Feb 2015 23:09 - 5146 of 5505
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