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[grupo guitarlumber] 02/6/2018 10:39

Pope Francis To Discuss Climate Change With Big Oil
By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jun 01, 2018, 5:00 PM CDT Pope

At a time when investors are piling pressure on Big Oil to take climate change seriously, top executives from some of the major global oil companies will be discussing climate change next week at the Vatican with Pope Francis, who called on Catholics in 2015 to join the fight against climate change, Axios reported on Friday, quoting several people familiar with the plans.

According to Axios’s sources, attendees include, among others—BP̵7;s chief executive Bob Dudley; Eldar Sætre, CEO at Equinor (formerly Statoil); Larry Fink, chief executive at the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock; and Ernest Moniz, former U.S. Energy Secretary under President Obama. ExxonMobil will also be represented at the meeting at the Vatican that Pope Francis will be hosting, according to multiple sources who spoke to Axios.

While other spokespersons either declined to comment or didn’t comment on the report, a spokesman for BP told Axios that Dudley was “looking forward to the Vatican dialogue. He believes gatherings of this kind help develop a better understanding of the energy transition and the best ways for corporations, countries and wider society to participate in it.”

A spokesman for Moniz has also confirmed his attendance.

A few months before the Paris Agreement was struck in 2015, Pope Francis wrote a so-called papal encyclical letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics saying that climate change is real and “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

Related: OPEC Sends Oil Prices Crashing

The meeting at the Vatican comes just after large global investors—representing a combined US$10.4 trillion worth of assets under management—urged oil and gas companies last month to start acting responsibly in tackling climate change.

“Investors are embracing their responsibility for supporting the Paris agreement. It is time for the entire oil and gas industry to do the same,” sixty large investors wrote in an open letter to the Financial Times.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

[grupo guitarlumber] 02/6/2018 10:25

PROACTIVEINVESTORS


So you want to invest in oil and gas, there’s a stock for every risk appetite but which will suit you best?
10:02 02 Jun 2018
There are several ways to play the oil and gas sector, but, they all carry different levels of risk.
oil and gas operations
Here's the who's who of the sector.

Crude oil and natural gas are fundamental and ubiquitous commodities throughout the capitalist system, so, putting any environmental proclivities aside, it should be obvious that the petroleum sector is a core part of all investment portfolios.

But, who are the sector’s main players and which should you be investing in?

First and foremost, you could also have a go at trading the commodities themselves.

That’s not so easy, however, not unless you have substantial facilities and you’re comfortable getting your hands dirty, literally as well as figuratively.

It is unlikely that very many private investors will have the gumption for physical crude trading.

Most suit and tie oil traders will be prepared to deal in oil futures and an array of other derivative contracts. This is an often volatile market and it is essentially a 24-market. So this arena is not for those with feint hearts or shallow pockets.
Many ways to navigate oil and gas equities

Equity investing can offer a more accessible and diverse way to play the petroleum market.

In London, particularly, there are many quite different opportunities to invest.

From taking long term portfolio holdings of BP or Shell shares to leveraged CFD trading positions ‘seat of the pants’ exploration stocks on AIM, and, everything else in between, there are avenues for most tastes and risk appetites.
Investing in ‘Big Oil’ integrated majors

London is home to a pair of the sector’s more prestigious oil majors, BP Plc (LON:BP) and Royal Dutch Shell Plc (LON:RDSB). Both are stalwarts of any blue-chip portfolio.

These are the sector juggernauts. Investing here, is all about income and that’s why both have fought tooth and nail to maintain dividends in recent years against the backdrop of sharply lower oil prices.

Scrip-payments, asset sales and cost cutbacks were all deployed to save shareholder’s yield.

Whilst the sector has experienced a sharp downturn in investment since the crude downturn since 2014, the tide now appears to be turning as the oil price is rallying.

After the period of rebalancing, the improving oil price is having a big impact on cash flow generation. Indeed, some analysts see the price of oil returning to US$100 per barrel over the next two years - and, that is expected to see dividend cover improve to around 200%.

It bodes well for the Big Oil stocks and their ‘slow-and-steady’ income investors.
Exploration and wildcat wells

We’re now talking about the complete opposite of BP or Shell. London is arguably the premier market for pre-revenue oil and gas stocks.

This is where you’ll find petroleum executive with a bright ideas and a need for capital,

London’s investment community is rather robust and knowledgeable when it comes to oil and gas prospecting - and that’s one of the reasons the world’s explorer’s list here.

The shareholder registers of market’s preferred players most likely comprising a good mix of prestige institutional investors, deep-pocketed hedge funds, private equity, and frequently a depth of highly engaged private investors.

The latter group, are often the most susceptible to the ambitious and seemingly compelling forward looking statements that flow out of small cap boardrooms.

Here, companies are an awful lot smaller - in terms of capital, headcount and operational capacity.

Ambition and salesmanship are, however, are definitely not in short supply.

Put most simply, this is the business of finding new hydrocarbon resources, and, its most often done by small companies that are set-up to risk their very existence in the pursuit of new discoveries.

In rudimentary terms, the idea is to make an educated guess where the oil or gas may exist and then drill a hole to prove it.

Naturally, that’s much easier said than done. Successful explorers reward their investors handsomely. This is a binary business. And, it is not particularly uncommon for a small cap oil speculator to double or even triple their initial capital investments.

At the same time, a well failure can decimate a trading position and, moreover, a bad enough well result can take down a company in its entirety.

Although there’s a great deal of hard science and engineering involved for the companies, the outcomes for outside speculators are analogous to those seen in roulette.

At any given time, the average small cap explorer may have just enough capital to deliver the programme they’re working on at that moment. They don’t yet generate their own cash and future fund raising is almost always a strong probability.

In case you were in any doubt before, it is fair to now conclude that small cap exploration isn’t the investment arena for the widows and orphans fund.
E&P independents

E&P ought to stand for expertise and pragmatism (but, it actually means Exploration and Production).

Companies like Tullow Oil plc (LON:TLW) and Premier Oil PLC (LON:PMO) are good examples of the companies found in the middle-ground between the multinational, vertically integrated majors and the AIM-market exploration minnows.

Here, there are many well established and well supported oil and gas companies.

They have production, some have quite substantial volumes of it too, but, unlike the Shell’s and BP’s of the world they are still not income investment plays.

These businesses are far from ex-growth. Typically, they are independent i.e. they are not integrated (in other words they sell crude oil, unlike the majors they have no involvement in any of the ‘downstream217; activities). Most have a spread of assets including producing fields, field development projects, proven but undeveloped discoveries and greenfield exploration ventures.

Such companies are valued based on the cash flow they generate and the (risk discounted) barrels that are proven in the ground. Whilst exploration potential very much remains a relevant and attractive factor for investors, it is not what underpins the share price.

Exploration risk is often shared through multi-partnered ventures, and, the negative impact of bad results dissipates more easily because the portfolios already hold material proven assets.

Equity-based funding is rare in this segment, largely because upwards pointing production growth allows for debt funding.

So far so good, right? The downside risk comes from the fact that the more aggressive players became highly leveraged earlier in the decade when the price of crude peaked well US$100 per barrel.

Most of those firms have since rearranged their financing, nonetheless, there has been something of a lag on growth because cash is being prioritised towards debt repayment - albeit, the crude rally to US$80 in the first half of 2018 eases pressure.

With leverage now less of a concern, the mid-sized independents may offer investors the best of both worlds.

[bountyhunter] 31/5/2018 19:19

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[bountyhunter] 31/5/2018 19:19

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