By Amy McLellan Good news for beleaguered North Sea oil producers this week as the UK Chancellor George Osborne, in his last Budget before the General Election, answered the industry’s call for urgent tax cuts. The Chancellor heeded dire warnings that without action the mature North Sea would enter a death spiral, delivering a package…
By Amy MCLellan There is good news for followers of Bowleven plc this week as the Edinburgh-based company banked US$165 million as it completed its farm-out of its Etinde permit offshore Cameroon. The company, which with a market cap of around £108 looks undervalued, retains a material 20 per cent non-operated stake in the resource-rich…
There was some interesting commentary from that old stager John Meyer and the team at SP Angel in their morning note today. “No exploration just a massive loss on derivative financial instruments” ran the headline bullet point for their thoughts on the latest news from Forte Energy. Once a notable force in the small cap…
By Amy McLellan AIM-quoted Zoltav Resources was boosted last week when the Russian authorities registered an additional 546 million barrels of oil for its Koltogor licence, taking the Russian standard C1 and C2 oil reserves on the company’s acreage in this part of Western Siberia to more than 1 billion barrels. The upgrade came after…
By Stewart Dalby In its trading update on January 21 about the 2014 results, which were published on March 11, i.e. last week, Alkane Energy the UK gas-to-power producer, said adjusted PBT were likely to be in the £3.25m to £3.5m range, rather less than the company itself expected and a lot less than some…
By Alastair Ford “It’s good that the first half is gone”, says Orosur Mining’s Ignacio Salazar, on the phone from Uruguay where he manages the company’s primary asset, the Arenal mine. He says that because the first half of fiscal 2015, actually the six months to November 2014, were characterised by low grades and hence…
By Amy McLellan These are exciting times for ASX-listed Pura Vida Energy, with a drillship set to arrive next month to spud the MZ-1 wildcat in the deepwaters off Morocco. This is a big well by any reckoning: it is drilling in 2,000 metres of water through up to five stacked reservoirs down to 6,000…
By Our Man in Oz Minews. Good morning Australia. It looks like your mining sector had another tough week. Oz. There’s no doubt about that. The mining index lost a hefty 7.4 per cent and the gold index was down by seven per cent. To put those falls into perspective that means the overall mining…
By Eithne Treanor The weaker dollar may have helped to boost the oil price early in the week, but the market is awash with oil and there’s no sign of any slowdown in production. Geopolitical issues are also a concern but in early trading on Friday, Brent crude was priced below US$57 a barrel with…
By Amy McLellan Oilbarrel.com’s 71st conference saw more than 200 people through the door to hear six companies with stories stretching from Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale to new frontiers in Africa to conflict zones in Ukraine. First to speak was Stephen Larkin, CEO of Africa New Energies, which uses proprietary algorithms to find oil. Regular…
