By Amy McLellan Excitement is mounting for backers of AIM-listed onshore drillers Europa Oil & Gas, Egdon Resources and Union Jack Oil as the second of the three intervals being tested at the Wressle-1 discovery in the East Midlands has come good. The Wingfield Flags reservoir has flowed free oil at rates of up to…
Evil discusses Phosphorus Holdco PIK Toggle bonds, Afren, Quindell and the Grand National… Back on Phosphorus Holdco PIK Toggle bonds, it has been pointed out to me that BC Partners are not fools and would not have seen this £205m dividend paid away unless they had taken advice to show that such payment would be…
By Amy McLellan There were high hopes for Kea Petroleum when it was founded by the ex-Rift Oil management team. They had made money in Papua New Guinea, selling up to Talisman Energy in 2009 in a £114.8m cash deal that was a 30 per cent premium on the stock price, and hoped to replicate…
By Robert Sutherland Smith This afternoon I opened up my laptop to discover a surprise: the share price of energy share SSE – which used to be known by the more picturesque and memorable name Scottish and Southern Energy (men in kilts and bowler hats Morris dancing) – had fallen by nearly 12p (0.77%) to…
By Stewart Dalby Speaking at an Oilbarrel conference last November Joel “Monty” Pemberton, CEO of AIM-listed Trinity Exploration & Production said that, the tiny nation of Trinidad, with massive offshore gas reserves, was propelled to become the methanol power house of the world, the sixth largest LNG exporter in the world and a partner to…
By Alastair Ford “Indaba was good for us”, says Aureus Mining’s David Reading. It was a smaller Indaba this year to be sure, but that wouldn’t have put Aureus off. It’s one of the few companies around these days that’s actually putting something into production and the rarity of that in itself meant that it…
by Frederik Vanhaverbeke In the latest of a new series for SBM Frederik Vanhaverbeke, author of Excess Returns: A comparative study of the methods of the world’s greatest investors, looks at how some of the world’s greatest investors are so successful. A country of security analysts would still over react. In short, even the best-trained…
By Zak Mir This may be something of an urban myth, but I am led to believe that until the late 19th century, a time when Great Britain was at its greatest, there was no general income tax. However, it would appear that socialist minded people managed to convince us that society would be a…
By Amy McLellan Aberdeen’s Dana Petroleum has clocked up more success in the North Sea. The oil company, which was acquired by KNOC in 2010, has successfully appraised the Lille John oil discovery in Licence 12/06 in the Danish North Sea, with the vertical appraisal well flowing at a maximum rate of 1,400 barrels per…
The quality of Mwana Africa’s Freda Rebecca gold mine in Zimbabwe is such that on one site visit a few years ago one analyst wondered why on earth the company was bothering with its other major asset – a nickel business at all. That same analyst also took his clients out of Northland Resources well…
