http://www.falklands-oil.com/

http://www.rockhopperexploration.co.uk

http://www.argosresources.com/




Rockhopper was established in 2004 with a strategy to invest in and undertake an offshore oil exploration programme in the North Falkland Basin. It was floated on AIM in August 2005. Rockhopper was the first company to make a commercial oil discovery in the Falklands. Today Rockhopper is the largest acreage holder in the North Falkland Basin, with interests in the Greater Mediterranean region.

You'll upset cyners with ramping like that marky.,.

I have a tax bill to pay also capital gains so i need this share and every other share i hold to go higher.

Cynic has been very quiet of late unless he is shopping at tesco these days.

Think he's sulking for missing asos.,.

i actually have some of these which are running at an ok profit ..... now sitting and waiting

Thought you we still in tesco cynic.

http://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/columns/fox-davies-capital/8071/

Rockhopper (LON:RKH) were also active once again, as press speculation continued to link the likes of Anadarko Petroleum with the troubled region. The stock traded as high as 333p before lunch, after a strong push yesterday. We have been huge fans of the Rockhopper story, and currently have a 600p price target on them. 350p looks to be the next line of resistance, with 310p looking to be support.

i am!

Just reviewing the info I have saved over the last 12 months on Rockhopper, and found this.
Glad I was one of those investors who took no notice.
A Questor share tip in April last year.
Rockhopper is an avoid.

Excerpts.
Although the Falkland oil story is exciting, you are more likely to get rich by investing in "boring" companies (presumably meant banks and the like).
However, the companies exploring in the Falklands would not meet my investment criteria. In fact, you'd probably be better off with a bet on the greyhounds.

Blimey, that greyhound would have had to have bloody good odds, and the race for Falklands oil has only just started.

Double post.

things can change quickly overnight, never mind 10 months!

I think things are moving quickly behind the scenes in RKH.

Until recently the only non-British voices you would hear in Stanley were passengers from visiting cruise ships, scientists about to embark on the big red British Antarctic survey ships, or migrant Chilean workers.

That’s no longer true. The Falkland Islands have struck oil — and the world has arrived.

The Malvina House on Stanley’s waterfront is an upmarket hotel and restaurant. It’s a converted house that used to belong to Malvina Felton — it’s not, as locals are at pains to point out, an unlikely homage to the Argentine name for the Falklands.

Unsurprisingly, the hotel is where the oil workers and executives congregate. In the bar they talk about the prospects for their wells. It’s a small place and hard not to overhear snippets of chat.

The most common foreign accent in the bar is American. Last Wednesday evening, a group of executives from Anadarko of Texas, including one of its executive vice-presidents, Ian Cooling, dined with a team from Rockhopper, the London-listed explorer that thinks it has found nearly 500m recoverable barrels of oil to the north of the islands.

Rockhopper wants a partner. Anadarko is not the only company that has met Rockhopper, but it could be significant that it was in town during the same week as Rockhopper’s director of operations, Dave Bodecott, and that they discussed commercial rig operation scenarios at length the day after the dinner.

Though commercial drilling is years away, the Falkland Islands is making money even from this exploration phase. Rockhopper, and other companies such as Desire Petroleum, have been using a rig tugged all the way from Aberdeen. Amazingly, Rockhopper struck lucky at its first attempt. Desire has drilled half a dozen wells and found nothing, though it does own part of another block where Rockhopper made a second discovery.

The islands’ government has been charging both acreage rental and, in the case of Rockhopper, discovery fees. The revenues helped turn an expected budget deficit last financial year into a surplus of £19m. Businesses have benefited too.

“We were more a seasonal hotel, now we are busy the whole year through,” said Carl Stroud, manager of Malvina House. “Our suppliers are happier because we are buying in more supplies — more fresh produce, meat, fish. It’s one big chain really. Oil people like to spend. They like good food.”

When, or if, oil starts to come out of the ground, the government will make money in two ways. First, a 9% royalty has to be paid on the market value of any oil.

Second, corporation tax is payable on the profits from exploration and extraction. It is 26%. Despite the British government’s large expenditure on maintaining a military base at Mount Pleasant near Stanley, its exchequer is not entitled to any of the proceeds from Falklands oil. If oil prices remain over $100 a barrel, and hundreds of millions of barrels are extracted, that’s a huge windfall for a community of only 3,000.

The government is looking at setting up a sovereign wealth fund, as Norway, a country with a small population but huge mineral wealth, has done to great effect.

The Argentinians claim the proceeds should be theirs, and it is the growing probability that the Falklands will yield commercial quantities of oil that is behind the increase in political rhetoric in recent weeks.

Stephen Luxton, director of mineral resources for the Falkland Islands, said it was “highly unlikely there would be any kind of sharing arrangement with them”.

Rockhopper said it will start commercial production in 2016. It plans to develop its Sea Lion field with a giant oil tanker moored over it. The ship will be fitted with a drilling rig and have capacity to store 2m to 3m barrels of oil, which would then be offloaded to other tankers.

Most of the oil jobs, in other words, will stay offshore. Only a few dozen oil workers are expected to be ashore at the peak of operations.

However, the wider onshore community is hoping for a windfall. Roger Spink, the president of the islands’ chamber of commerce, said: “The opportunities [provided by the oil industry] are enormous for all sorts of businesses, from transport companies to guest houses, the retail sector and logistics. There will be jobs all over the place.”

Although the Falklands cover an area about two-thirds the size of Wales, most people live in Stanley. Last week, Rockhopper launched a social impact study, using consultants from Plexus Energy. An appeal for views was launched through an advertisement in the Penguin, the local newspaper. The firm wants to help residents to “mitigate negative impacts” of its arrival, and “enhance and maximise” the benefits.

Kyle Biggs runs Endurance Tours, and takes tourists to battlefield sites, penguin colonies and other attractions on the islands. “I think there will be a big surge in tourism if we get an oil boom,” he said. “It will raise the profile of the Falklands, attract more people, and thus get better facilities for the tourists.”

Julie Halliday owns Studio 52, a graphic design, photography and clothing business based in a pretty white cabin on the shore at Stanley.

“When workers come off the oil rigs and spend a few days in town, they tend to want something to remind them of where they have been,” she said. “I think they tend to earn pretty good money, and it would be good if they come and spend some of it in my shop. I’d like a piece of that,” she added, laughing.

Spink conceded that the islanders had been disappointed before. Several companies, including Shell, explored the North Falklands Basin 14 years ago but didn’t come up with anything viable.

Other oil explorers have found inspiration in Rockhopper’s success. Two companies — Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders and Southern — have raised tens of millions to explore an area south of the islands (Rockhopper is in the north). Argos Resources, another London listed firm, has plans to drill wells on a separate block in the northern basin. Their chances of success are remote.

Oil isn’t the only industry on the island that faces uncertainty. Squid fishing accounts for 75% of exports and more than half of GDP. There are two main sort of squid: the smaller loligo, and the larger — and locals say less tasty — illex.

The illex spawns off the coast of Argentina, and then moves into international waters as it matures. This season the Argentine government told its fishermen to begin the catch earlier than normal on December 1, potentially reducing the number of mature squid that can be caught by Falklands vessels.

The 55-metre factory trawler John Cheek, crewed by 35, was moored at the jetty in Stanley harbour. On its deck, managing director Stuart Wallis was angry. He said the Argentinians were irresponsible. “They are trying various manoeuvres to stop the mature fish reaching our zone.”

One side-effect of the Falklands dispute is the lack of an international fisheries agreement in the southwest Atlantic. This has led to overfishing on a huge scale. For example, the southern blue whiting, once one of the most abundant fish there, is now commercially extinct. As for the illex squid, the government used to bank on £16m in licence fees every year from it. Now it expects nothing.

John Barton, director of natural resources for the Falkland Islands, said: “We used to have really quite good relations with Argentina on fisheries conservation for the 15 years after the conflict. We did joint research. So it’s rather depressing now that, 30 years after the conflict, we don’t have those relations.”

He doesn’t blame Argentina alone for overfishing, but adds “having some sort of bilateral or multilateral measures to enable conservation measures to be put in place would be very helpful.”

Fishing isn’t the only arena in which the Argentinians are putting economic pressure on the Falklands. The islands used to have a container ship link to Uruguay and Chile. But that was lost. Islanders blame Argentine pressure on their South American neighbours. A new link has been opened to Brazil, but some business figures in the Falklands want this kept quiet, lest the Argentinians put paid to that too. There’s only one scheduled flight a week, to Punta Arenas in Chile.

With all this uncertainty, the islands are trying to diversify their economy. There are 500,000 sheep on the Falklands, traditionally almost all used for their wool. But the wool price fluctuates wildly, leaving farmers nervous.

So, the abattoir a few miles outside Stanley has had a refit, and improved quality control and mechanisation now means thousands more Falklands lambs are eaten in European restaurants. Farmers increasingly have another option to wool, said its boss, John Ferguson.

There are also plans for a new waterfront at Stanley, so the 50,000 passengers who disembark from the cruise ships every year have a better experience. The government is working on a new air charter link direct to Miami so the Falklands can be the start and end of many cruise journeys, which would be good for hotels, restaurants and taxis.

It’s expensive to get many goods, especially fresh produce, in the islands. Single items of fruit and vegetables often cost more than £1. Half a pineapple can cost £6.

Other aspects of the cost of living are also expensive. The islands have no fibre-optic cable. Broadband is via satellite, which costs many households an eye-watering £150 a month.

However, despite the rising cost of living and the political tensions, the mood is upbeat. At 0.5% at the last count, the Falklands have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world. The 15 and 16 year olds who go away to Britain to do A-levels and go to university tend to come back after their studies.

The oil industry is widely welcomed. Even the environmental lobby on the islands is positive. James Fenton, chief executive of Falklands Conservation, said that to remain economically viable “the islands need to keep as much income as possible from as many sources as possible. The oil development is going ahead regardless of whether it is environmentally good or bad”.

However, despite that sense of inevitability, he felt that because the prevailing winds around the Falklands tend to blow from the southwest, the risk of disaster was low. “The current exploration is taking place in areas that are probably the least environmentally sensitive in terms of potential spills.”

This weekend another exploration rig, the self-powered Leif Erikson, arrives. Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders and Southern will use it this time in the South Falkland Basin. Parts of the area have been seismically mapped but it is nonetheless a shot in the dark.

Even if Rockhopper’s find ends up being the first and last discovery off the Falklands, the 3,000 people in this tight-knit community could soon become rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Going to be a busy day Monday....clip clop clip clop


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2012-01-22/anadarko-petroleum-in-talks-with-rockhopper-sunday-times-says.html

Anadarko Petroleum in Talks With Rockhopper, Sunday Times Says
By Tuhin Kar - Jan 22, 2012 Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) is “considering a move” on Rockhopper Exploration Plc (RKH), the Sunday Times reported without saying where it got the information.

Anadarko executives last week met managers of the U.K. company that discovered oil near the Falkland Islands off Argentina, according to the report.

Rockhopper has hired Bank of America Corp. to find a partner to share the development costs of the Sea Lion reservoir. The search may lead to a takeover, the Sunday Times said, citing unidentified bankers.

From the FT.....

Texans fly in for Rockhopper talks:

The American oil giant that partnered BP on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil platform is considering a move on Rockhopper, the Falklands explorer.

It is understood that a team of executives from Anadarko Petroleum, the $40 billion oil group, flew to the Falklands last week to meet Rockhopper managers.

The discovery of a field with an estimated 500m barrels of oil off the north coast has increased the tension between Britain and Argentina, which has maintained its claim on the islands since going to war over them in 1982. David Cameron accused Buenos Aires last week of “colonialism”.

Shares in Rockhopper rocketed last week after The Sunday Times revealed it was in talks with several firms, including Cairn Energy, the FTSE 100 venture.

Anadarko was a minority owner of BP’s Macondo well, which created a huge oil spill after the platform exploded in 2010. It agreed last year to pay $4 billion to BP to settle all claims over the disaster. The Texas-based group sent a team of officials on a private Gulfstream jet to Port Stanley, the Falklands capital, last Wednesday for talks with Rockhopper.

The explorer, which has only 15 employees, needs at least $2 billion (£1.3 billion) to fund development of its Sea Lion reservoir, 80 miles north of the Falklands, and is expected to strike a partnership deal with a larger oil company. It has appointed Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the investment bank, to find a suitor to shoulder some of the development costs.

It is understood that six companies have expressed an interest in becoming partners.

Bankers believe, however, that the auction could lead to a takeover. Rockhopper’s Falklands find is its only asset. Dave Bodecott, the exploration director, has been quoted as saying that while a partnership is the preferred option, a full takeover is a possibility.

On Friday, after an 18% rise during the week, shares in Rockhopper closed at 322½p, valuing the business at £912m.

Two companies — Falkland Oil and Gas and Borders and Southern — have raised tens of millions to explore an area south of the islands (Rockhopper is in the north). Argos Resources, another London listed firm, has plans to drill wells on a separate block in the northern basin. Their chances of success are remote.

sounds ambiguous until you study the English ...... the writer means that chances of success are remote for all 3 companies mentioned and not just Argos

Marky, whats with all the new ,BOR, RKH, FOGL Threads from Proselenes, ?? some one that keen reminds me of Potatohead ??

Oil explorer Rockhopper in talks

(UKPA) – 37 minutes ago

A UK-based explorer that struck oil near the Falklands is reported to be in talks with a US giant involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

A team of officials from Texas-based oil group Anadarko Petroleum flew into Port Stanley to talk to Rockhopper Exploration about helping it tap into the 500 million barrel field, according to The Sunday Times.

Rockhopper, which only has 15 employees, is understood to be looking for a partner to stump up at least 2 billion US dollars (£1.3 billion) to help it open up its discovery 80 miles north of the islands.

However, with its Falklands find Rockhopper's only asset, bankers believe the talks could develop into a takeover bid.

Shares in Rockhopper rose 18% last week after it was claimed the Salisbury-based explorer was in talks with several firms, including FTSE 100-listed Cairn Energy. It is understood that six companies are now interested in becoming partners.

Anadarko was a minority owner in BP's Macondo well, which exploded spilling almost five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and killing 11 workers. It agreed last year to pay BP four billion US dollars to settle claims over the disaster.

Rockhopper and other companies such as Desire Petroleum have been using a rig tugged all the way from Aberdeen to explore the Falklands.

Rockhopper struck lucky at its first attempt and also made a second discovery.

It plans to start commercial production in 2016 when it hopes to develop the Sea Lion field with a giant oil tanker moored over it. The ship will be fitted with a drilling rig and have the capacity to store up to three million barrels of oil, which would be offloaded to other tankers.

Rockhopper's discovery of the oil field has increased the tensions between the UK and Argentina, which has maintained its claim to the islands since going to war over them in 1982. The row escalated last week when Prime Minister David Cameron accused the Argentines of colonialism.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hNWmLPNAZels0MIkBgOvXazu6FTw?docId=N0063271327247046567A

andarko looking promising perhaps still a fly in the ointment is http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16663290

gla

it will be interesting to see if Prince William still gets posted to falklands next month or if cancelled for security reasons - be a big plus if he still goes of course?

as i said in a post that got shot down about the US in an earlier post:

"We recognise de facto UK administration of the islands, but take no position regarding sovereignty," the State Department said.

the support is and will not be the same as when maggie sent the task force last time - lets hope there is no need again as we can not muster one anymore

http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/noticias/2012/01/120119_video_entrevista_hague_pc.shtml

:-))