Sydney - Thursday - October 27: (RWE Australian Business News)...

Sydney - Thursday - October 27: (RWE Australian Business News) -

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NZ OIL and GAS (NZO) chairman Tony Radford told the AGM events over the past 12 months had combined with market sentiment and knocked the share price badly, "in fact to ridiculously low levels".

"The value of our Kupe interest alone exceeds NZOG's present market capitalisation," he said.

By how much, then?

CEO David Salisbury fleshed out some details.

He said Tui production was expected to continue to 2020 and Kupe to 2025.

"Kupe, and to a lesser extent Tui, provide the solid base on which we can pursue future growth," he said.

"Unfortunately, the market does not currently fully recognise the core value of your company.

"Based on some reasonably conservative assumptions, NZOG has a core value of $NZ480m, against a current market capitalisation of $NZ245m."

The sharemarket agreed, just a little bit.

The shares rose 1.5c to 50c.

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In the end, guess who always pays.

TOLL HOLDINGS' (TOL) chairman told the AGM yesterday that, as shareholders would be aware, the Australian Government was progressing with its plans to introduce a carbon tax.

"Transport and logistics businesses are relatively high emitters of greenhouse gases - it is all a part of the process of moving people's goods from one place to another," he said.

"As Australia's freight industry leader we recognise we have an important role to play in minimising the energy intensity of the logistics task.

"We do not expect a net material financial impact on Toll as a result of the introduction of the carbon tax as any increased cost will be passed on to our customers."

Oops, there goes the compensation package.

Toll fell 2c to $4.79 because the meeting was also told that the lead-up to Christmas would be an important influence on results for the first half and it was still "very difficult to predict how this will play out".

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CHALLENGER ENERGY (CEL) was all the rage in July when it climbed from 9.4c to as high as 16c on speculation over testing of the Triple Crown prospect.

In more recent times it's been in the doldrums around the 9.5c mark.

The company delivered another dose of disappointment yesterday when it announced that it had successfully drilled the target zones, which included the "lost circulation" zone on the original vertical well and a section of the reservoir where formation image logs had indicated encouraging natural fracture development.

During drilling through these zones several "very significant" drilling breaks were observed, which provided initial encouragement that significant fractures may have been intersected.

However, the gas shows did not increase and no commercial gas flow was observed.

The shares fell 3.5c to a year low of 6c.

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RANGE RESOURCES (RRS) must be the target of one of the more puzzling price rise queries.

The ASX asked the company if it was aware of any explanation for a rise from 14c on Tuesday ... to 14.5c yesterday.

It wasn't as if there was heavy trading to prompt the burning question.

After 648,000 shares were traded on Tuesday, the total fell to 235,000 yesterday, which is not out of the ordinary for the stock.

In fact, it rose a further 0.5c to 15c after the query.

This was because the company, which could not explain the rise, pointed out it had been the subject of some chat room speculation involving uncompleted deals in Puntland.

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Demergers aren't always sure-fire winners.

A day after FOSTER'S (FGL) showed its AGM how beneficial it had been to spin off TREASURY WINE ESTATES (TWE), KAROON GAS AUSTRALIA (KAR) has explained to its shareholders why it had to pull the plug on its demerger plan.

Executive chairman Robert Hosking told the meeting it was "essential" to discuss the withdrawing of its IPO for the South American assets on the Brazilian stock exchange by Karoon late last year:

"In the lead-up to the IPO, market conditions changed unfavourably with a distinct change in sentiment as a result of both a temporary oversupply of Brazilian equities through the largest capital raising in history by Petrobras, and underperformance of other recent IPO in the immediate timing around the pricing of the Karoon Brazil IPO.

"The board felt that the goal of providing an avenue for Karoon shareholders to gain value through the Brazilian IPO was not being achieved at the final offer prices by bidders for the IPO, particularly given the potential of the asset base."

OK, so suddenly there were more IPO shares available in Brazil than Zumba DVD packs at an Aussie department store last Christmas.

"As you will see from the presentation that Mark Smith will provide today, as a team we feel in the long run, Karoon shareholders will have the opportunity to extract more value from the single-company structure than as result of the IPO.

"Currently world markets and in particular Brazilian oil and gas companies are performing very poorly," Mr Hosking said.

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Meanwhile, it's business as usual at Karoon, and it's as motivated as a Zumba participant.

"The combined drilling programs over the next 18 to 24 months across two continents will test a range of large independent prospects and field appraisal targets, with the potential to dramatically increase Karoon's discovered resource portfolio," Mr Hosking said.

"Karoon shareholders have a very exciting year ahead."

The excitement saw Karoon shares rise 10c to $4.