Thanks for that post,
@dcx31. I went looking for the link to what you quoted, but I couldn't find it. I did find this more recent version however, from PCL's March 2024 Quarterly Activities Report, as per their ASX Announcement of 30 April 2024:
https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/PCL/02800922.pdf"As announced by the Company on 19 January 2024, the long stop date by which Woodside Energy must exercise its option to farming to PEL 87 (by committing to drill an exploration well) will be 180 days from fulfilment of both (a) the seismic processing contractor providing final processing deliverables, and (b) the PEL 87 Joint Venture providing to Woodside a license (
Seismic License) to utilize the PEL 87 3D seismic data (subject to authorisation by the Ministry of Mines & Energy,
MME). Condition (a) has now been met, with final deliverables having been received mid-April 2024. Pancontinental is working to finalise joint venture and MME approvals to the Seismic License so that condition (b) will be met and the long stop date thereby established. The Company will provide an announcement once this has occurred.
"Pancontinental notes that Woodside does have the ability to exercise its option at any time prior to the long stop date."
As I could not recall any mention of a "Seismic License" at all in Q1, I consulted the Company's ASX Announcement of 19 January 2024 (PEL 87 Project Update) as cited above:
https://wcsecure.weblink.com.au/pdf/PCL/02763926.pdfWhich confirms THERE WAS NO MENTION OF A SEISMIC LICENSE therein! All the more troubling in that the aforementioned announcement was either unintentionally or deliberately misleading, in that this new condition (b) of a seismic license was apparently shoehorned in after the fact.
It is clear now that it is the MME that must approve the "seismic license" and presumably the other JV partners (NAMCOR, Custos, and PCL, where presumably there has no problem with those approvals, though a possible delay out of NAMCOR wouldn't be too surprising, given the corporate upheavals they've been going through over the past few months).
It is also clear that "at least 180 days" is now being considered as "at most 180 days" by use of another new phrase "long stop date." Let's hope this is actually the case and will not be contested by WDS.
The more pointed questions remain, however:
1) What is this "Seismic License," exactly, and what does it entail?
2) Have other companies that acquired seismic data offshore Namibia received seismic licenses?
3) At what point, exactly, did this notion of a "seismic license" become an issue, and why?
I'm now going to go into speculation mode. Even though WDS has received all the seismic data deliverables from CGG, without a seismic license, they apparently cannot use those data in any material sense, such as using it to determine a drilling location. We know other operators offshore Namibia have not encountered similar issues, so this must be a problem for WDS because they have yet to have exercised their option. But they can't exercise their option until they commit to drilling a well, which
perhaps assumes that they must use the data for which they have yet to obtain a license to do so.
That sounds a bit like a Catch 22. But is it a real Catch 22, or a convenient one that affords WDS a reason to further delay, enabling them to
defacto extend the "long stop date," which they may read literally as originally agreed upon "at least" 180 days, not "at most" 180 days?
But we know that since mid-April WDS both has
all the seismic data (deemed deliverable), and has been "using" it, at least in the sense of analysing and interpreting those data.
One further observation. In Iain's March Investor webinar, he seemed so open in discussing almost everything. Contrast that with his most recent webinar, where in contrast he seemed to remain very tight-lipped (just my impression, others may disagree). Some ventured that was because he was toning down estimates as to how much oil in place there might be in the PEL. I think, returning to speculation mode, that it is because there are potential legal ramifications over the JV agreement itself.
If so, what those legal ramifications might be, if any at all, is where I draw my speculations to a close. Hopefully all will be set aright with this upcoming meeting, and things will finally get back on track.
(20min delay)