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.

Rockhopper's trimmed losses miss forecasts
By Benjamin Chiou

Thu 31 May 2012

RKH - Rockhopper Exploration

Latest Prices
Name Price %
Rockhopper Exploration 303.00p -0.08%

FTSE AIM 100 3,139 +0.63%
FTSE AIM 50 2,937 +0.85%
FTSE AIM All-Share 694 +0.40%
Oil & Gas Producers 7,564 +0.90%

LONDON (SHARECAST) - North Falkland Basin oil and gas group Rockhopper Exploration saw losses shrink in the year ended March 31st as impairment charges more than halved.

The firm, which is yet to generate any revenues as it ramps up operations, said that its pre-tax loss for the period improved from $87.2m to $53.8m, as the impairment charge dropped from $68.1m to $26.4m. However, the consensus estimate was for a loss of $29.6m.

The loss per share fell from 40.58 cents last year to 19.92 cents, but came in short of the 12.53 cents loss per share expected by analysts.

During the year, the company completed the appraisal campaign of the Sea Lion field and made four more "significant" discoveries on our operated acreage. "The aim of the appraisal drilling has been to narrow the potential range of the estimated field size and the volumes of recoverable oil contained within it. To this end we drilled a further six wells, one of which was flow tested, and continued to build our understanding of all of the data collected," said Chairman Pierre Jungels.

A recent report undertaken by a petroleum consultancy rated the change of the Sea Lion development going ahead as designed at a 90% probability "which is high", Jungels said. The study calculated the risked post tax net present values, at a 10% discount rate, of the 2C cash flows as being $3.5bn for the Sea Lion field plus an additional $0.6bn for the satellites.

Jungels assured that Sea Lion is a commercial field and a "play opener" for the North Falkland Basin. "In addition, recent 3D seismic and further interpretation of the older 3D indicates that the exploration potential of the basin is significant and I have no doubts that more discoveries will be made," he said.

The best estimate in place for Sea Lion alone is 1.3bn barrels of oil.

Going up like a train!

Must be some rumours out there......?

Hi Avsec,

There is, mainly on threads like these though.
It does look like one of those up 5% one day, down 5% the next sort of moves, although it surely can't be much longer before we see a rise that is backed up by news of either a farm-in or buy out.
Mind you, there are a few posters on other sites spouting nonsense such at it being up to 2 years before Rockhopper get any sort of deal, if at all.
What gets me is the fact that some people actually get into a discussion with these posters, when it is obvious that they don't even believe their own tripe and are posting purely to wind people up.

Greek (hoping soon to be richer than the country).

Greek
There are sciolists everywhere! I suppose that they state things so often that they end up believing they are right; there seems to be more on III than here!
You are right with the cyclical movement - faster than a whore's drawers but overall the facts remain:
RKH have oil in commercial quantities in their own right
RKH have interests in other finds.
They remain an exploration company and will now have to use their skills to 'land' a partner to take this on to the next phase.

I suppose that a lot relies upon the whole FI oil industry in order for RKH to take advantage of quantity of scale - that is why I hope that the South F. Basin also prove commercially viable.
As to your signature block - you probably already are!

Hi Avsec,

Agree re iii and your other comments.

There is a petition doing the rounds to stop the UK giving any further loans to Argentina, (yes, believe it or not we still are).
To sign this petition go to http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/34551

greek perhaps we should help greece instead?

Thanks Halifax.

If you send me a cheque via MoneyAm, I promise I will put it to good use.

Greek.

greek cheque in the post!

IOU , 70 Billion euro's

From iii Morani......i know the source so happy with info is 100%

Altogether, there were about 40 people at the RKH Presentation. I could not read all the print on the projections but Paul Culpin's presentation was fairly easy to follow and delivered in laymans terms. Basically PC outlined how and what RKH hope to do to exploit the oil and showed pictures of vessels and equipment expected to be used along with analysis of the sea bed, the Sea Lion prospect, etc. He has worked in Brazil for a total of 4 years, and this was his 3rd visit here. The following are the notes I managed to get down :-

In short, they took the gamble to explore the 'lakes' instead of the 'high' surrounds which led to the oil finds. He spoke of 1B barrels only normally getting 30 - 40% recovered but new techniques are always developing and may lead to more oil being recoverable.

He talked of GOCs - gas oil contacts and GOWs - gas oil water contacts.
They need to drill vertical and then go horizontal.
15,000 barrels per day may be possible with the water being cycled so it is never going into the environment and saving on more water being required.
He stressed no oil would be landed in the Islands.
The FPSOs would be used and there were diagrams to show how the pipe lines would be laid and how things would flow from the wells.

There is a huge 'turret' at the bow of the FPSO and the oil processing platform was adjacent to that and then a mass of pipe lines, etc, moving the oil to the stern of the vessel.

They could process up to 100,000 barrels per day which would be shipped away every 10 - 15 days.
These vessels would be converted in Singapore (the turret with processing deck I think).

There will be about 12,000 tons of equipment in modules on board.
The wave heights are expected to be lower than in the North Sea but a bit more than in Brazil - Shetland waves are about 30m high and ours only about 18-20m and although our wind is constant it is not expected to be as bad as the North Sea either.
It is waxy crude which is very good for gasoline, and low sulphur so that is great apparently.

It will likely go to the Gulf of Mexico and the Far East.
To get set up they will probably hire warehouse vessels for 12-15 months go get installed and large, versatile, construction vessels for about 15-18 months
They showed a diagram of what I think he called a module (appeared as a big, flat, yellow lego block, surrounded by quite a number of wells and again the piping, etc. was shown.

There was also a picture or two of a heavy lift barge with a large, white stringer weighing about 11 tons to stabilise the barge, and I think this is going to lay the pipe lines with automatic welders on board, welding and feeding the pipe out through this stringer (I think that is what it was called or something similar)
It would have about 350 ton crane on board and about 150 people welding.
Culpin spoke quite a bit about personnel that could be expected to be on the various vessels.

A field development plan will be submitted to the regulators and an environmental impact assessment will be on going for about 40 years and here he referred to when they started in the North Sea in the mid 70s with projected oil extraction and how it is still on going with revised projections.

60-70 people to run rig and another 40 through contractors.
Drilling 25-30 wells would require about 450 people with support from another 100 on shore and another 20-40 for other purposes.
They thought about 60 may be requited from the local community putting pressure on the local labour market.

Tankers will come in about every 12 days or so and there will be continuing vessel movements with 2 or 3 choppers a week for support.
It will take about 3 years for first oil and it will be intensive as time is money.

We then had a questions and answers session.
First asked if there would be an increase in oil flights and was told it will probably increase to at least weekly.
Next question asked was about Argentina. The reply was the current situation is semi problematic but not one day had been lost out of 400 from the previous drilling rounds due to Argentine influence.

The next asked if we could provide enough vessel facilities as things develop and was told that FIPASS would have to increase 2 fold but movement there would be about the same as the rigs will take longer with these drillings than what we have previously seen, but there would be a need for an upgrade on diesel supply for example.
The following asked something about protocol but I could not hear the question entirely, but the reply was that there would be every respect for impact on the local community and that early attempts have been made to understand the problems likely to arise here because of the small community . Their team has been here twice already and I think they said more details and possibly reports would soon be forthcoming.

Someone asked whether the main impact would be on/in Stanley or out in Camp and the reply was that we would see development for 3-4 years and then it would taper off but as things develop in the North Falklands Basin, who knows but Sea Lion will only impact on Stanley.

Finally, it was asked if the pipe lines would be lying on the sea bed, and was told that the sea bed is very very soft and because of that and the weight of the pipes they would likely be 2/3 - 3/4 buried. Due to fishing interests they talked about the possible need to make a 60 sq. km exclusion area from trawling over the pipe areas.

M

Markymar,

Thanks for that.
Interesting!

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/06/15/argentina-refuses-to-receive-invitation-to-dialogue-from-the-falklands-government

Argentina refuses to receive invitation to dialogue from the Falklands’ government
A letter from the Falkland Islands government inviting the Argentine government to enter into a dialogue and which was to be delivered directly to President Cristina Fernandez’ delegation during the Decolonization Committee debate was frustrated by the passivity of the C24 chair and by Foreign Minister Hector Timerman.

http://en.mercopress.com/2012/06/15/cristina-fernandez-calls-for-an-end-to-colonialism-and-blast-un-security-council

Cristina Fernandez calls for an end to colonialism and blast UN Security Council
In a strong speech claiming sovereignty over the Falklands/Malvinas issue addressing the UN Decolonization Committee, Argentine president Cristina Fernandez called on the UK “to leave this history of colonialism behind and start building a new history based on dialogue” but at the same time blasted the recent announcement of a referendum in the Islands do decide on their political status.

A lot more buys than sells today but the sp taking a bit of a knock.

I hear the rig aint working again.......not sure of problem.

I wish Margaret Thatcher was still in power... she will show Cristina what being British is all about.

The iron lady would sort her out instead of this pussy footing around her and taking it on the chin all the time.

"A man may climb Everest for himself, but at the summit he plants his country’s flag."

Thatcher would have took us out of the EU decades ago , and we would still have had a better economy

Markymar/Aldwickk,

Agree to both.
If there was a Maggie v Christina political fight, Maggie would win by a knock out before the seconds had chance to clear the ring.
The political shambles we have now, both in power and opposition are nowhere near in the same class.
Mind you, when I say in power, I should have said, 'Those that pretend to be in power, cow towing to the EU of course.

Anyone else think its very hypocritical any MP criticising Jimmy Carr and others for using 'morally wrong' tax avoidance schemes, when their favourite hobby was 'House Flipping' to avoid CGT.
Also their attitude, 'We have a better pension than you, so up yours', which once again knocks their message that pension reform and retirement ages are necessary, which of course they are.

Not forgetting that they are still not required to show receipts for all expenses.

Fiddling Barstewards the lot of them!

Ignoring the possible result from the BOR drilling, somewhere around 200p looks likely imo. Of course BOR failure or success would have a marked effect on the sp.

I think BOR results maybe up to a month away due to delays,not as close on this one to get my ear to the door.