Ramco Energy Share Discussion Threads

[cyberpost] 24/9/2009 16:52

replied hb2

[brando69] 24/9/2009 16:48

cheeky tick up before the close... normally bodes well for the next day...

[talha2] 24/9/2009 16:47

hairy

did you see today;s AG post?

[hairyback2] 24/9/2009 16:46

cyber,you having probs with email ?

[cyberpost] 24/9/2009 16:31

Iraq and its oilDeterring foreign investorsSep 24th 2009 | BAGHDAD
From The Economist print edition

Iraq's ramshackle oil ministry is not encouraging foreign investment

SUITORS keep knocking on the door of Iraq's oil ministry but the people inside are still coyly loth to say "come in". Licences to develop oil fields are being awarded at tortoise speed. The ministry has been telling companies looking for exploration and drilling contracts to give unusually large upfront loans before they can be considered for long-term deals. Iraq's parliament, still full of MPs who are wary of foreigners coming to "steal Iraq's oil", have obstructed progress by failing to pass the required laws. Still, Iraq has the fourth-largest oil reserves in the world behind Saudi Arabia, Canada and Iran. With MPs in recess for the summer, technocrats in the ministry have quietly been taking some cautious steps towards turning Iraq into the global hydrocarbon giant it says it wants to be.

Oil-ministry officials have recently tweaked plans for a long-awaited licence auction in December, to make it more attractive. International bidders will be able to take part in several-rather than just one-of the ten greenfield projects on offer, including Majnoon in the south-east, one of the country's two largest fields. Officials met an array of oil bigwigs from around the world last month in Istanbul to discuss terms. Most of the prospective buyers were persuaded that they have a chance of winning contracts, with more than one-third of Iraq's reserves up for grabs. The United States Energy Information Administration, a statistical agency in the US Department of Energy, reckons that oil in those ten undeveloped Iraqi fields would fill about 41 billion barrels, worth nearly $3 trillion at today's price.

Yet Iraq's government is still discouraging foreign investment by insisting on offering rock-bottom fees to companies bidding to get the oil out. In June, at the first oilfield auction since the American invasion, the government offered $2 a barrel against the $4 proposed by the companies. As a result, only one field, Rumaila, was sold. Even so, BP and the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), which won the contract, are still waiting for it to be signed, though this was supposed to have happened last month. Meanwhile, no work at the field is going on. Five other fields in the first auction may be offered again, but not until next year-and only if back-channel talks with unsuccessful bidders come to nothing.

Iraq's oil ministry people expect the second auction go better than the first. But have they learned their lesson? Two gasfields that failed to have contracts sold will instead be developed by a company run by the ministry itself. That hardly encourages previously unsuccessful bidders to try again.

Despite Iraq's long history as an oil producer, the country still sorely needs foreign help to explore and get the stuff out. Saudi Arabia can fend off the oil majors' demands because it has enough experts of its own. But most of Iraq's geologists and engineers have left the country in the past six years, either because they could not tolerate the insecurity or because the new establishment has chased them away as Baathists formerly in thrall to Saddam Hussein. So Iraq has too few people of its own to provide the much-needed boost in production. Its engineers are doing well at maintaining the pipelines built in the 1960s, but the latest equipment is beyond them. At 2.45m barrels a day (see chart), latest production is still a shade down on its peak output before the American invasion.

Last month the cabinet agreed on a law to set up a national oil company. The ministry will be split into a regulator and a producer, embracing the 16 companies it now runs. Presently, North Oil Company, focusing on the area around Kirkuk, and South Oil Company, around Basra, produce most of the oil. But they do not drill, explore or refine the oil and process gas. Those activities fall to other companies supervised by the ministry, few of which co-operate with each other. Instead, they have separate fiefs, each competing in age-old turf wars. The latest idea is to bring them together under one management.

That would be progress. Yet there are repeated setbacks. Royal Dutch Shell expected to clinch a deal this month to get natural gas from oil extracted in Basra province. But locals loth to let foreigners make profits have forced a delay until after the general election due in January. The new government that will then emerge will also have to decide the fate of two foreign consortia, led by DNO, a Norwegian company, and Addax, a Canadian one, which have both recently begun to export oil from Iraqi Kurdistan without the approval of the federal oil authorities.

In any event, the Kurdish regional government in Erbil, the Iraqi Kurds' capital, is arguing with Baghdad over how payment is allocated. As a result, Addax and DNO have yet to be paid for their exports. And this week the Kurdish government dramatically halted co-operation with DNO after dealings in its shares were temporarily suspended by the Oslo Stock Exchange over alleged irregularities.

Further south, CNPC has had trouble in Wasit province, where local Iraqis, demanding a bigger share of the profits from their own field, have protested by destroying generators and cutting electricity lines.

But insecurity is no longer the biggest factor deterring foreigners. Most vociferously they complain about the new Iraqi establishment's lack of political will. A few months before the crucial election, politicians feeling obliged to beat a nationalist oil drum are unable to tell voters that the country will earn more from its oil only if foreigners are drawn in. If the second international oil auction flops as badly as the first one did, Iraq risks deterring investors for a long time.

[arayan] 24/9/2009 16:29

btw if we got an extra 20 wells it would be 50 not 80. The IDC wont lose their 30

[cyberpost] 24/9/2009 16:25

pete

that was a delayed trade.. done at 15:15.. reported an hour late

[snobtimus shaime] 24/9/2009 16:21

email back and suggest they should advice on the number of sheets and method to use for toilet paper.


YES. THIS

[jonck] 24/9/2009 16:20

yeah, email back and suggest they should advise on the number of sheets and method to use for toilet paper.

[crashbang] 24/9/2009 16:18

Ju1c. Someone has to. For £50k a year. By the way, Dundee ya bass ;-)

[pete_edwards] 24/9/2009 16:17

25k at 48p moved the ask up to 51p, had to be a delayed buy..

[snobtimus shaime] 24/9/2009 16:16

you need a new job

[julcester] 24/9/2009 16:15

I've just received an internal email at work, informing me of the correct way to peel-off a post-it note.

I kid you not.

"Peeling it backwards will cause the note to curl and affect the stickness of the product, leading to an increased use of post-its. Peel diagonally across and slightly upwards from the post-it stack".

[turkey3] 24/9/2009 16:14

kbc biding for 50/- @48.5p

[g3a] 24/9/2009 15:51

Steady on chaps!

They may not be the messiah and they may be a very naughty bunch of boys, but we have absolutely nothing to go on, like the police station whose toilet was stolen. Brando pass the gin, merrrrp.

All we need here is an official RNS (you got that Iraq?).

[bhindi123] 24/9/2009 15:50

Noticed AG states :

"...This leaves MPC in a much much stronger position - they have done everything above board (and not tried to obtain what they want by 'other means'). Hence one of the reasons why they have been offered more work..."


Does the term "more work" suggest work additional to what was already expected ?

[cephalosaurus] 24/9/2009 15:44

40 bagger coming our way - overnight

[cephalosaurus] 24/9/2009 15:41

Weatherfords get 220million US$ odd for 15 wells? So what happens to the share price if MPC get 60 wells?? :-)))

[g3a] 24/9/2009 15:39

Nothing about 20 well tenders being cancelled though!
Surely this would have been released instead of delayed till 2010? Or was that just a polite way of putting it.
Anyhow, it's all conjecture.