Ann: Half Yearly Report and Accounts, page-5

It's really hard to understand what is happening with the capital return, and we may never end up finding out the reason why it is declined if that does end up being the outcome. What I'll say (and have said before) is that in many cases companies decide to make a return of capital before they receive a ruling from the ATO that the return of capital was deemed a capital return rather than a dividend. Cases I've observed are TTB, FAR, PSC, CE1. In the case of TTB I've not actually seen the class ruling ever come out and when I (and others I'm sure) received their return of capital in early 2023, the payment advice from the registry said dividend, but in mytax (or whatever the ATO platform is called) it did not register this payment as a dividend like all the other prefill dividends, nor did Sharesight ping as a dividend. TTB was wound up, so it's also not like anyone is going to follow up.

Surely the multiple tax advisers who OEL have employed must have given the OEL board some caution on this front, or possibly Mr Otto's tax adviser has said await the ATO making a ruling before telling your board reps what to do. Or maybe Mr Otto is not engaged and his board just play monopoly during their meetings and have a giggle about how they're doing the wrong thing by shareholders (which is reflected in the current share price- not many companies trading at a negative EV on the ASX). We can only speculate what is the real story as the board are not telling us anything. But on the plus side, they have repatriated the money for the capital return and it is sitting there waiting for some form of distribution to shareholders. It would be extremely wierd if having repatriated the money they were to use it for future drilling.

That all being said, given the company is net cash and its main assets have 6-13 years of life and decent cash flow left in them factoring in decommissioning, it seems a decent investment proposition, especially if management keep looking to reduce costs and stop wasting shareholder money on drilling when their track record has been rubbish and their share price is telling them to return cash to shareholders.