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BLOE Block Energy Plc

1.80
0.00 (0.00%)
26 Apr 2024 - Closed
Delayed by 15 minutes
Share Name Share Symbol Market Stock Type
Block Energy Plc BLOE London Ordinary Share
  Price Change Price Change % Share Price Last Trade
0.00 0.00% 1.80 09:41:08
Open Price Low Price High Price Close Price Previous Close
1.80 1.80 1.875 1.80 1.80
more quote information »
Industry Sector
OIL & GAS PRODUCERS

Block Energy BLOE Dividends History

No dividends issued between 27 Apr 2014 and 27 Apr 2024

Top Dividend Posts

Top Posts
Posted at 25/4/2024 10:34 by citys2874
Good start for BLOe and STG today expecting both to rally this afternoon with a bit of volume .....should break past 2.00 +
Posted at 19/4/2024 09:11 by the skipper
Good find Andy. The amount of money raised by these companies and their valuations provides a new perspective for investors in BLOE.
Posted at 11/3/2024 19:52 by faraweigh2
Notable that investors are keeping close to the action.Lately there have been regular and significant buy trades and accumulating, resulting in a rallying in the share price since late last year.The last larger trades today were buy trades.A new TR1 notification or TR1 increase would most certainly bring BLOE in to focus ; )
Posted at 11/3/2024 08:27 by burtond1
If you can't make tonight's #BLOE presentation then please feel free to DM me any questions to give to the BOD for consideration...
Posted at 05/3/2024 14:00 by profit7
Sellers out I think
Good buying in the last hour,
This will get on many m raders,
£1.6Billion NPV to BLOE

Wow!!
Huge upside from here
Posted at 09/2/2024 21:17 by jaknife
andyalbi71,

"Not quite Jak …… Block are in profit now"

Are they?

Really?

When did "now" start? BLOE reported losses in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and have also reported losses for the first half of 2023:



(It may even have reported losses in every year prior to 2017 but I can't be bothered to check)

Is your assertion that BLOE will make a profit in the second half of 2023? Is that your definition of "now"?

Or shall we just agree now that BLOE are NOT in profit "now" and then I don't need to come back when the finals are published to show you that they've made a loss?

JakNife
Posted at 04/1/2024 10:33 by spangle93
A CPR wouldn't need to go through the authorities - it's different to Russia, where the state tells you what the reserves are!

The independent persons' report (there has to be at least 2 authors) uses the same data as the operator, but their own knowledge, experience and company philosophies to validate or challenge the work that BLOE has done. So, it's not better or worse than Block's own view, or "more right". It's just a different view, but required by the market because cynical investors might believe (understandly) that it's in the company interest to sway figures to the positive.

However, the CPR will provide a draft to BLOE, who can then check for oversights and make supported challenges to any parts that they feel misrepresent the position adopted by the expert. The independent firm will consider these points before issuing their final report.

So, it's not fair to lump the blame wholly on the independent expert if the CPR is "late" - it could just as easily be that key members of the BLOE technical team were on their Christmas hols.
Posted at 12/9/2023 01:02 by iceagefarmer
DATE
07.09.23
Block Energy Part I : The Investment case for Georgia


“…Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west….”


With its latest development well reaching total depth last week, Block Energy (AIM:BLOE) continues to rollout a multi-tiered strategy to realise the full potential of extensive assets in the country of Georgia. The company has made robust progress in opening up Georgia’s complex subsurface, with successive drilling successes allowing it to report record production in Q2.

But although the potential value of BLOE’s assets dwarves the company’s market cap, commentary regarding Georgia’s security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has clouded some investors’ perceptions of its operational progress. Here, in the first of two articles looking at the company’s prospects, we take a close look at the investment case for Georgia, one of the more successful post-Soviet countries, in light of the ongoing conflict. The second will focus on BLOE’s current strategy, following CEO Paul Haywood’s video interview with TMS published last week.

Georgia’s continued economic liberalisation


Georgia continues to develop a liberal, trade-oriented economy, making particularly impressive progress over the last 20 years. The country is tightly woven into the global market through membership of organisations and networks including the World Trade Organisation, the Asian Development Bank, the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It has negotiated free trade agreements with the EU, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, the US, Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, opening access to a duty-free market of 2.8 billion customers. Deals with with Israel and India are under consideration.

A consistent policy of liberalisation followed by successive governments has laid the foundations for a diversified non-commodity reliant economy with robust GDP growth. Per capita income is converging toward EU levels, the poverty rate more than halving since 2010. Georgia now has a population of 3.7 million people, earning a GDP of $24.6bn. The 2014 Liberty Act was a particularly significant reform, formalising a credible fiscal framework capping the country’s fiscal deficit at 3pc and its public debt at 60pc of GDP, earning Georgia the credibility that has facilitated strong foreign direct investment averaging 8.5pc of GDP over the last 10 years.

Georgia’s swift rebound from the pandemic and the initial shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine testifies to the country’s gathering economic resilience. It recorded economic growth of 10.5pc and 10.1pc in 2021 and 2022, and, against the grain of the global slowdown, has continued to expand rapidly, with preliminary growth for Q1 of 7.2pc. Fitch Ratings upgraded Georgia’s sovereign credit rating outlook from stable to positive earlier this year, attributing the country’s revised status to ‘exceptionally strong’ GDP, and rigorous fiscal and monetary discipline.

Georgia’s strong fundamentals have allowed for continued investment in the country’s infrastructure, which grew at a record 6.7pc last year. Its progress has earned it favourable ratings across a range of international indices, particularly in regard to economic transparency. Georgia ranked seventh of 190 nations in the World Bank’s 2020 ease of business index,, came in first in the 2021 Open Budget Survey published by the International Budget Partnership, and is ranked 17th in the latest Transparency in the Time of War index compiled by the European Research Centre for Anti Corruption and State-Building. The country’s ongoing liberalisation programme earned it 15th place in the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Economic Freedom Annual Report, and 21st in last year’s Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom.

A thriving energy market


Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Since 2012 Georgia has been a net importer of electricity, and its deficit is growing, expected to reach more than 3 TWh by 2030. In 2020 the country imported 99.7pc of its natural gas and 97.8pc of its oil. Only about a third of Georgia’s renewables potential has so far been tapped, leaving the country’s grid dependent on oil and gas.

And with Georgia positioned at the heart of the Transcaucasian region that reaches from the shores of the Black Sea to the Caspian, rich in hydrocarbons from the Eocene, Cretaceous, Miocene and Oligocene eras, there is plenty of it. Soviet exploration and production planted the seeds for today’s infrastructure, now a highly developed complex of pipelines running through the Transcaucasus, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline which moves Azeri crude to the Turkish Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the South Caucasus Pipeline, which carries gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey: both pipelines run close to BLOE’s assets. Significant new projects include the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), inaugurated in 2019, and the Black Sea underwater electric cable project, signed-off late last year, linking Azerbaijani energy resources with Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Major export terminals are located at the Black Sea ports of Supsa and Poti.

Operations employing the full range of modern exploration and production technologies, including 3D seismic, stimulation and directional and horizontal drilling, are facilitated through a regulatory environment ensuring an open energy market and a stable framework for Production Sharing Contracts. Georgia’s untapped resources and established infrastructure have drawn increasing interest from the world’s largest energy companies. BP has been a lead investor in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, South Caucasus, and Baku-Supsa pipelines, in the past few years committing another $2bn to the Trans-Adriatic line, Georgia’s biggest ever inward investment. ExxonMobil has signed an agreement with the Georgian government to carry out a comprehensive review of western Georgia’s hydrocarbon resource potential. And BLOE acquired its largest production and exploration blocks from SLB (then known as Schlumberger).

BLOE is integrated into the country’s energy network, both through the company’s ongoing production and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia supporting continued exploration and production, and progress towards a long-term gas offtake agreement.

Georgia after Ukraine


Since independence Georgia has pursued political as well as economic liberalisation. The country has a parliamentary system, parties exchanging power over the past 20 years through elections judged free and fair by independent observers. Long identifying with Europe, the nation has established close ties with the EU, submitting a formal application for membership after the Ukraine invasion. It is a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership together with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, and has signed an Association Agreement with Brussels, entering into a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. Georgian citizens have had free visa entrance to the Union since 2017.

Public opinion is clearly oriented to the West: 47pc of Georgians believe their country’s foreign policy should be ‘pro-Western’, and 31pc want a policy that is ‘pro-Western with good relations with Russia’. Only 7pc are ‘pro-Russian with good relations with the EU/NAT’, and just 2pc identify as ‘pro-Russian’. Polls consistently indicate three-quarters of the population support EU membership.

But these aspirations are complicated by Georgia’s relationship with its Russian neighbour, the key to understanding nuances of the country’s politics that can perplex observers. Georgia’s response to the Ukraine conflict, for example, which has been the subject of much commentary, must be understood in the context of the brief war it fought with Russia in 2008, which ended with the annexation of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, populated by a significant number of Russian speakers. The rest of Georgia, though part of the former Soviet Union, has never had the same historic significance for Russia as Ukraine or Belorussia.

In many respects Georgia’s measures are aligned with the broader international response. The country has supported the UN Resolution condemning Putin’s aggression, the suspension of Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe, and the launch of the International Criminal Court’s probe into alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The Georgian National Bank has cooperated with international resolutions, and, as noted, the country followed Moldova and Ukraine in applying for EU membership. But it has also followed its own path, the ruling Georgian Dream government resisting Ukraine’s call to impose sanctions on Moscow, arguing that such ‘unproductive’ measures would merely deprive Georgians of income from Russian tourism and trade as well as remittances from relatives working in Russia.

BLOE’s opportunity


This, then, is the complex but stable environment in which BLOE is establishing itself as a major energy supplier. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west.

Our second article will further detail the company’s strategy. To summarise, the company has a 100pc working interest in five Georgian onshore licence blocks, including IX and XIB, where production during the 1980s peaked at 67,000 bopd. BLOE is currently producing across six fields within four licenses, pursuing a four-project strategy guided by the principles of low risk development and appraisal, and high impact exploration.

Project I is focused on a region intersecting the company’s West Rustavi and XIF blocks developing 3C Contingent Resources of 27.5 MMbbls. Project II is evaluating large, undrained areas of the deeper zones of the Middle Eocene reservoir in the Patardzeuli filed on the XIB licence, testing 200 MMbbl 2C Contingent Resources. Project III is appraising the commercialisation of substantial contingent resources of gas – 984 BCF 2C Contingent Resources – in the XIB & XIF licenses, within the Lower Eocene, Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous geological formations. And Project IV is focused on exploration of extensive structures contiguous to a proven 200 M Mbbls field.

The first phase of Project I secured back-to-back drilling success through the company’s JKT-01Z and WR-B01Za wells, allowing BLOE to record Q2 production of an average 664 boepd, and to go ahead with the drilling of two further side-tracks and a new well. The latest well, WR-34Z, reached total depth last week and testing is about to commence.

Our previous coverage of BLOE has offered extensive coverage of the company’s operational progress. Look out for much more detail in our next article. At the time of writing BLOE’s price was 1.3p and its market cap £8.5mDATE
07.09.23
Block Energy Part I : The Investment case for Georgia


“…Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west….”


With its latest development well reaching total depth last week, Block Energy (AIM:BLOE) continues to rollout a multi-tiered strategy to realise the full potential of extensive assets in the country of Georgia. The company has made robust progress in opening up Georgia’s complex subsurface, with successive drilling successes allowing it to report record production in Q2.

But although the potential value of BLOE’s assets dwarves the company’s market cap, commentary regarding Georgia’s security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has clouded some investors’ perceptions of its operational progress. Here, in the first of two articles looking at the company’s prospects, we take a close look at the investment case for Georgia, one of the more successful post-Soviet countries, in light of the ongoing conflict. The second will focus on BLOE’s current strategy, following CEO Paul Haywood’s video interview with TMS published last week.

Georgia’s continued economic liberalisation


Georgia continues to develop a liberal, trade-oriented economy, making particularly impressive progress over the last 20 years. The country is tightly woven into the global market through membership of organisations and networks including the World Trade Organisation, the Asian Development Bank, the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It has negotiated free trade agreements with the EU, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, the US, Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, opening access to a duty-free market of 2.8 billion customers. Deals with with Israel and India are under consideration.

A consistent policy of liberalisation followed by successive governments has laid the foundations for a diversified non-commodity reliant economy with robust GDP growth. Per capita income is converging toward EU levels, the poverty rate more than halving since 2010. Georgia now has a population of 3.7 million people, earning a GDP of $24.6bn. The 2014 Liberty Act was a particularly significant reform, formalising a credible fiscal framework capping the country’s fiscal deficit at 3pc and its public debt at 60pc of GDP, earning Georgia the credibility that has facilitated strong foreign direct investment averaging 8.5pc of GDP over the last 10 years.

Georgia’s swift rebound from the pandemic and the initial shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine testifies to the country’s gathering economic resilience. It recorded economic growth of 10.5pc and 10.1pc in 2021 and 2022, and, against the grain of the global slowdown, has continued to expand rapidly, with preliminary growth for Q1 of 7.2pc. Fitch Ratings upgraded Georgia’s sovereign credit rating outlook from stable to positive earlier this year, attributing the country’s revised status to ‘exceptionally strong’ GDP, and rigorous fiscal and monetary discipline.

Georgia’s strong fundamentals have allowed for continued investment in the country’s infrastructure, which grew at a record 6.7pc last year. Its progress has earned it favourable ratings across a range of international indices, particularly in regard to economic transparency. Georgia ranked seventh of 190 nations in the World Bank’s 2020 ease of business index,, came in first in the 2021 Open Budget Survey published by the International Budget Partnership, and is ranked 17th in the latest Transparency in the Time of War index compiled by the European Research Centre for Anti Corruption and State-Building. The country’s ongoing liberalisation programme earned it 15th place in the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Economic Freedom Annual Report, and 21st in last year’s Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom.

A thriving energy market


Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Since 2012 Georgia has been a net importer of electricity, and its deficit is growing, expected to reach more than 3 TWh by 2030. In 2020 the country imported 99.7pc of its natural gas and 97.8pc of its oil. Only about a third of Georgia’s renewables potential has so far been tapped, leaving the country’s grid dependent on oil and gas.

And with Georgia positioned at the heart of the Transcaucasian region that reaches from the shores of the Black Sea to the Caspian, rich in hydrocarbons from the Eocene, Cretaceous, Miocene and Oligocene eras, there is plenty of it. Soviet exploration and production planted the seeds for today’s infrastructure, now a highly developed complex of pipelines running through the Transcaucasus, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline which moves Azeri crude to the Turkish Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the South Caucasus Pipeline, which carries gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey: both pipelines run close to BLOE’s assets. Significant new projects include the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), inaugurated in 2019, and the Black Sea underwater electric cable project, signed-off late last year, linking Azerbaijani energy resources with Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Major export terminals are located at the Black Sea ports of Supsa and Poti.

Operations employing the full range of modern exploration and production technologies, including 3D seismic, stimulation and directional and horizontal drilling, are facilitated through a regulatory environment ensuring an open energy market and a stable framework for Production Sharing Contracts. Georgia’s untapped resources and established infrastructure have drawn increasing interest from the world’s largest energy companies. BP has been a lead investor in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, South Caucasus, and Baku-Supsa pipelines, in the past few years committing another $2bn to the Trans-Adriatic line, Georgia’s biggest ever inward investment. ExxonMobil has signed an agreement with the Georgian government to carry out a comprehensive review of western Georgia’s hydrocarbon resource potential. And BLOE acquired its largest production and exploration blocks from SLB (then known as Schlumberger).

BLOE is integrated into the country’s energy network, both through the company’s ongoing production and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia supporting continued exploration and production, and progress towards a long-term gas offtake agreement.

Georgia after Ukraine


Since independence Georgia has pursued political as well as economic liberalisation. The country has a parliamentary system, parties exchanging power over the past 20 years through elections judged free and fair by independent observers. Long identifying with Europe, the nation has established close ties with the EU, submitting a formal application for membership after the Ukraine invasion. It is a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership together with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, and has signed an Association Agreement with Brussels, entering into a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. Georgian citizens have had free visa entrance to the Union since 2017.

Public opinion is clearly oriented to the West: 47pc of Georgians believe their country’s foreign policy should be ‘pro-Western’, and 31pc want a policy that is ‘pro-Western with good relations with Russia’. Only 7pc are ‘pro-Russian with good relations with the EU/NAT’, and just 2pc identify as ‘pro-Russian’. Polls consistently indicate three-quarters of the population support EU membership.

But these aspirations are complicated by Georgia’s relationship with its Russian neighbour, the key to understanding nuances of the country’s politics that can perplex observers. Georgia’s response to the Ukraine conflict, for example, which has been the subject of much commentary, must be understood in the context of the brief war it fought with Russia in 2008, which ended with the annexation of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, populated by a significant number of Russian speakers. The rest of Georgia, though part of the former Soviet Union, has never had the same historic significance for Russia as Ukraine or Belorussia.

In many respects Georgia’s measures are aligned with the broader international response. The country has supported the UN Resolution condemning Putin’s aggression, the suspension of Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe, and the launch of the International Criminal Court’s probe into alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The Georgian National Bank has cooperated with international resolutions, and, as noted, the country followed Moldova and Ukraine in applying for EU membership. But it has also followed its own path, the ruling Georgian Dream government resisting Ukraine’s call to impose sanctions on Moscow, arguing that such ‘unproductive’ measures would merely deprive Georgians of income from Russian tourism and trade as well as remittances from relatives working in Russia.

BLOE’s opportunity


This, then, is the complex but stable environment in which BLOE is establishing itself as a major energy supplier. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west.

Our second article will further detail the company’s strategy. To summarise, the company has a 100pc working interest in five Georgian onshore licence blocks, including IX and XIB, where production during the 1980s peaked at 67,000 bopd. BLOE is currently producing across six fields within four licenses, pursuing a four-project strategy guided by the principles of low risk development and appraisal, and high impact exploration.

Project I is focused on a region intersecting the company’s West Rustavi and XIF blocks developing 3C Contingent Resources of 27.5 MMbbls. Project II is evaluating large, undrained areas of the deeper zones of the Middle Eocene reservoir in the Patardzeuli filed on the XIB licence, testing 200 MMbbl 2C Contingent Resources. Project III is appraising the commercialisation of substantial contingent resources of gas – 984 BCF 2C Contingent Resources – in the XIB & XIF licenses, within the Lower Eocene, Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous geological formations. And Project IV is focused on exploration of extensive structures contiguous to a proven 200 M Mbbls field.

The first phase of Project I secured back-to-back drilling success through the company’s JKT-01Z and WR-B01Za wells, allowing BLOE to record Q2 production of an average 664 boepd, and to go ahead with the drilling of two further side-tracks and a new well. The latest well, WR-34Z, reached total depth last week and testing is about to commence.

Our previous coverage of BLOE has offered extensive coverage of the company’s operational progress. Look out for much more detail in our next article. At the time of writing BLOE’s price was 1.3p and its market cap £8.5m
Posted at 12/9/2023 01:01 by iceagefarmer
DATE
07.09.23
Block Energy Part I : The Investment case for Georgia


“…Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west….”


With its latest development well reaching total depth last week, Block Energy (AIM:BLOE) continues to rollout a multi-tiered strategy to realise the full potential of extensive assets in the country of Georgia. The company has made robust progress in opening up Georgia’s complex subsurface, with successive drilling successes allowing it to report record production in Q2.

But although the potential value of BLOE’s assets dwarves the company’s market cap, commentary regarding Georgia’s security following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has clouded some investors’ perceptions of its operational progress. Here, in the first of two articles looking at the company’s prospects, we take a close look at the investment case for Georgia, one of the more successful post-Soviet countries, in light of the ongoing conflict. The second will focus on BLOE’s current strategy, following CEO Paul Haywood’s video interview with TMS published last week.

Georgia’s continued economic liberalisation


Georgia continues to develop a liberal, trade-oriented economy, making particularly impressive progress over the last 20 years. The country is tightly woven into the global market through membership of organisations and networks including the World Trade Organisation, the Asian Development Bank, the Council of Europe, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. It has negotiated free trade agreements with the EU, China, Hong Kong, Turkey, the US, Canada, Japan, Norway and Switzerland, opening access to a duty-free market of 2.8 billion customers. Deals with with Israel and India are under consideration.

A consistent policy of liberalisation followed by successive governments has laid the foundations for a diversified non-commodity reliant economy with robust GDP growth. Per capita income is converging toward EU levels, the poverty rate more than halving since 2010. Georgia now has a population of 3.7 million people, earning a GDP of $24.6bn. The 2014 Liberty Act was a particularly significant reform, formalising a credible fiscal framework capping the country’s fiscal deficit at 3pc and its public debt at 60pc of GDP, earning Georgia the credibility that has facilitated strong foreign direct investment averaging 8.5pc of GDP over the last 10 years.

Georgia’s swift rebound from the pandemic and the initial shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine testifies to the country’s gathering economic resilience. It recorded economic growth of 10.5pc and 10.1pc in 2021 and 2022, and, against the grain of the global slowdown, has continued to expand rapidly, with preliminary growth for Q1 of 7.2pc. Fitch Ratings upgraded Georgia’s sovereign credit rating outlook from stable to positive earlier this year, attributing the country’s revised status to ‘exceptionally strong’ GDP, and rigorous fiscal and monetary discipline.

Georgia’s strong fundamentals have allowed for continued investment in the country’s infrastructure, which grew at a record 6.7pc last year. Its progress has earned it favourable ratings across a range of international indices, particularly in regard to economic transparency. Georgia ranked seventh of 190 nations in the World Bank’s 2020 ease of business index,, came in first in the 2021 Open Budget Survey published by the International Budget Partnership, and is ranked 17th in the latest Transparency in the Time of War index compiled by the European Research Centre for Anti Corruption and State-Building. The country’s ongoing liberalisation programme earned it 15th place in the Fraser Institute’s 2022 Economic Freedom Annual Report, and 21st in last year’s Heritage Foundation Index of Economic Freedom.

A thriving energy market


Georgia’s growing economy has generated the surging demand for energy to which BLOE wants to make an ever greater contribution. Since 2012 Georgia has been a net importer of electricity, and its deficit is growing, expected to reach more than 3 TWh by 2030. In 2020 the country imported 99.7pc of its natural gas and 97.8pc of its oil. Only about a third of Georgia’s renewables potential has so far been tapped, leaving the country’s grid dependent on oil and gas.

And with Georgia positioned at the heart of the Transcaucasian region that reaches from the shores of the Black Sea to the Caspian, rich in hydrocarbons from the Eocene, Cretaceous, Miocene and Oligocene eras, there is plenty of it. Soviet exploration and production planted the seeds for today’s infrastructure, now a highly developed complex of pipelines running through the Transcaucasus, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline which moves Azeri crude to the Turkish Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and the South Caucasus Pipeline, which carries gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey: both pipelines run close to BLOE’s assets. Significant new projects include the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), inaugurated in 2019, and the Black Sea underwater electric cable project, signed-off late last year, linking Azerbaijani energy resources with Europe through Georgia and Turkey. Major export terminals are located at the Black Sea ports of Supsa and Poti.

Operations employing the full range of modern exploration and production technologies, including 3D seismic, stimulation and directional and horizontal drilling, are facilitated through a regulatory environment ensuring an open energy market and a stable framework for Production Sharing Contracts. Georgia’s untapped resources and established infrastructure have drawn increasing interest from the world’s largest energy companies. BP has been a lead investor in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, South Caucasus, and Baku-Supsa pipelines, in the past few years committing another $2bn to the Trans-Adriatic line, Georgia’s biggest ever inward investment. ExxonMobil has signed an agreement with the Georgian government to carry out a comprehensive review of western Georgia’s hydrocarbon resource potential. And BLOE acquired its largest production and exploration blocks from SLB (then known as Schlumberger).

BLOE is integrated into the country’s energy network, both through the company’s ongoing production and a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia supporting continued exploration and production, and progress towards a long-term gas offtake agreement.

Georgia after Ukraine


Since independence Georgia has pursued political as well as economic liberalisation. The country has a parliamentary system, parties exchanging power over the past 20 years through elections judged free and fair by independent observers. Long identifying with Europe, the nation has established close ties with the EU, submitting a formal application for membership after the Ukraine invasion. It is a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership together with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine, and has signed an Association Agreement with Brussels, entering into a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. Georgian citizens have had free visa entrance to the Union since 2017.

Public opinion is clearly oriented to the West: 47pc of Georgians believe their country’s foreign policy should be ‘pro-Western’, and 31pc want a policy that is ‘pro-Western with good relations with Russia’. Only 7pc are ‘pro-Russian with good relations with the EU/NAT’, and just 2pc identify as ‘pro-Russian’. Polls consistently indicate three-quarters of the population support EU membership.

But these aspirations are complicated by Georgia’s relationship with its Russian neighbour, the key to understanding nuances of the country’s politics that can perplex observers. Georgia’s response to the Ukraine conflict, for example, which has been the subject of much commentary, must be understood in the context of the brief war it fought with Russia in 2008, which ended with the annexation of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, populated by a significant number of Russian speakers. The rest of Georgia, though part of the former Soviet Union, has never had the same historic significance for Russia as Ukraine or Belorussia.

In many respects Georgia’s measures are aligned with the broader international response. The country has supported the UN Resolution condemning Putin’s aggression, the suspension of Russia’s membership in the Council of Europe, and the launch of the International Criminal Court’s probe into alleged war crimes in Ukraine. The Georgian National Bank has cooperated with international resolutions, and, as noted, the country followed Moldova and Ukraine in applying for EU membership. But it has also followed its own path, the ruling Georgian Dream government resisting Ukraine’s call to impose sanctions on Moscow, arguing that such ‘unproductive’ measures would merely deprive Georgians of income from Russian tourism and trade as well as remittances from relatives working in Russia.

BLOE’s opportunity


This, then, is the complex but stable environment in which BLOE is establishing itself as a major energy supplier. Georgia continues to forge its own path, developing a liberal economy and democracy with due sensitivity to its geographic and cultural location somewhere between east and west.

Our second article will further detail the company’s strategy. To summarise, the company has a 100pc working interest in five Georgian onshore licence blocks, including IX and XIB, where production during the 1980s peaked at 67,000 bopd. BLOE is currently producing across six fields within four licenses, pursuing a four-project strategy guided by the principles of low risk development and appraisal, and high impact exploration.

Project I is focused on a region intersecting the company’s West Rustavi and XIF blocks developing 3C Contingent Resources of 27.5 MMbbls. Project II is evaluating large, undrained areas of the deeper zones of the Middle Eocene reservoir in the Patardzeuli filed on the XIB licence, testing 200 MMbbl 2C Contingent Resources. Project III is appraising the commercialisation of substantial contingent resources of gas – 984 BCF 2C Contingent Resources – in the XIB & XIF licenses, within the Lower Eocene, Paleocene and Upper Cretaceous geological formations. And Project IV is focused on exploration of extensive structures contiguous to a proven 200 M Mbbls field.

The first phase of Project I secured back-to-back drilling success through the company’s JKT-01Z and WR-B01Za wells, allowing BLOE to record Q2 production of an average 664 boepd, and to go ahead with the drilling of two further side-tracks and a new well. The latest well, WR-34Z, reached total depth last week and testing is about to commence.

Our previous coverage of BLOE has offered extensive coverage of the company’s operational progress. Look out for much more detail in our next article. At the time of writing BLOE’s price was 1.3p and its market cap £8.5m
Posted at 28/7/2023 11:03 by bibs
Market awakening:

Block Energy (AIM:BLOE) continues to roll out its multi-tiered strategy to unlock the full potential of a now extensive portfolio of oil and gas assets in the country of Georgia.

The company was founded to bring cutting edge drilling technology to a geology that has offered rich indications of its potential since the Soviet era, and thereby serve a Georgian energy market almost completely dependent on imports from neighbouring countries.

BLOE joined AIM five years ago with a set of fields on the outskirts of capital city Tbilisi, notably West Rustavi, which produced 50 Mbbls of light sweet crude during the late 20th century, with contingent resources of 38 MMbbls oil and 608 BCF gas in the Middle, Upper and Lower Eocene formations. In 2020 BLOE’s acreage multiplied more than 30 times when the company acquired assets adjacent to West Rustavi from departing operator SLB, opening new development opportunities including Block XIB, a prolific producer which has yielded 180 million bbls of oil from the Middle Eocene reservoir, rates peaking in the 1980s at 67,000 bopd. The new assets increased the company’s 2P reserves of oil and gas by 64 MMboe, 2C contingent resources by 29 MMboe, and prospective resources by 245 MMboe.

BLOE’s strategy is organised into four projects. Project I seeks to develop the Middle Eocene layer in the West Rustavi/Krtsanisi field. Project II focuses on infill development at the Middle Eocene oil reservoir in the Patardzeuli oil field in Block XIB. Projected funds from Projects I and II will anchor Project III, a longer term venture to appraise and develop the extensive natural gas resources that BLOE’s analysis indicates is present in the Eocene layer under the former SLB Blocks XIF and XIB. Project IV is a farm-out agreement with Georgia’s national oil company for a work programme on areas of the XIB licence not previously covered by the strategy.

The primary focus in recent months has been drilling progress at Project I, which has allowed BLOE to deliver record production with an average rate of 664 boepd. A third Project I well was spudded earlier this summer.

With a clear strategy to serve a well defined market, BLOE is best viewed as a longer term hold. The company has made solid progress over the past few years towards establishing itself as a major player in the Caucasian energy market. BLOE’s share price at the time of writing was 1.2p and its market cap £8.3m.

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