We had a busy quarter with a lot to comment on here.
BEOS Conference:
Great to see presentations by our leads alongside some some high quality names such as CNOOC and TotalEnergies. The booth at the conference is professional and we had our UK technical team as well as Australian management there to represent our licences. Imo it was important to have our company heads attend this event in force due to the potential of our UK licences, particularly the buzzard lookalike Whitsun which has the ability to move the needle, even for major producers.
P2527/P2528P with Dana Petroleum:
Technical work on Whitsun completed to drill ready status and we are engaged with potential farm-in partners. Not much more to say here, Whitsun is significant and a company maker in itself
P2610 with Equinor:
Tech work ongoing for target assessment. Equinor are actively drilling North Sea targets, and executing production expansion near Boaz (
link and
link and
link) so advancing Boaz to a drill ready level would allow Equinor to decide on drill priority and rig scheduling. This is the focus for P2610
P2530 with Dana Petroleum:
Ongoing hunt for a partner to fund drill
AC/P61 Gem:
Geochems and fluid inclusion studies of nearby wells during the quarter. Not mentioned in the quarterly but of note is TotalEnergies and INPEX bought out everything surrounding our Gem prospect from PTTEP and was accepted by the regulator in December. There is proven gas from Cash/Maple discovery. M&A activity is a positive.
WA-547-P Dorado:
Permit extended for three years with no additional work terms. We are adapting our Environmental plan for the 3D seismic work. Fully support this as it is important to keep our swimming fauna safe. At a massive 2U of 500MMbbl recoverable oil it is one of the largest un-drilled targets in the NWS so environmentalists will be melting down to stop any work on WA-547-P, hence a professional approach needed. Also note that Carnavon CVN Santos JV has pushed their Dorado drilling back to 2025, and as rigs are very limited in Australia right now, it could nicely line us all up for a combined drill schedule
New Ventures:
UK 33rd Licensing awards are imminent, and Finder actively progressed opportunities in "
...adding a new geographic area to diversify exposure with focus on countries that are actively encouraging oil and gas investment... Subject to regulatory and approvals process, Finder is confident of concluding new opportunities in the near term consistent with the above criteria.". My speculative take on the UK licensing awards is that we were probably selected for something here as I don't think FDR would be mentioning the round at all if we weren't, and we obviously have been talking to the regulators about the latest tranche, let's see over the next weeks. The exciting part is the new diversification push, it was first mentioned only a week ago in the corp presentation but we are already at regulatory approval stage tells me these new venture opportunities are much closer than thought. Key wording is
subject to regulatory and approvals process which likely means they are either new licenses (possible it's out of round bidding) or commercial deals/farm-ins. With countries "
actively encouraging oil and gas investment" I'm thinking Africa, Asia, ME, North America (gulf) or possibly South America
$7.5M in the bank, $9M MC, $1.5M EV. $350k on exploration and tech, $600k on staff, $400k on admin/corps. No income from partners this time due to drill ready status achieved with Dana, but I expect will resume with Equinor next quarter. Eight quarters of funding in the bank and an excellent portfolio.
GLTA
(20min delay)