Gold Coast Bulletin

From yesterday's Gold Coast Bulletin.
Gold Coast oil and gas explorer Icon Energy hopes resources tough times over

Jenny Rogers, Gold Coast Bulletin
November 24, 2016 1:00am

GOLD Coast oil and gas explorer Icon Energy hopes to hit a sweet spot after a tough time in the oil and gas industry.
The company is exploring after a two-year hiatus and sitting on a highly prospective tenement in the Cooper Basin, Icon’s annual meeting in Bundall was told yesterday.
Icon chairman Stephen Barry said the explorer hopes long-time shareholders will see a turnaround in the company’s share price.
“The past two years have been very difficult for the oil and gas industry,” Mr Barry said.
“Turmoil and wild fluctuations saw oil and gas prices plummet and then recover back to US$50 per barrel, only to drop to the current level of US$45.
“All oil and gas companies, both large and small, experienced difficulties as profits and cash flow evaporated worldwide.
“Volatility is still expected in the crude oil market in the short and medium terms.
“(However) the prices for crude oil have excellent medium to long term prospects where oil produced worldwide was not replaced by exploration over the past two years.”
He said, against that background, Icon is “pleased” to have resumed exploration at its “most prospective” tenement in the Cooper Basin in South Australia.
Icon has embarked on a new 3D seismic survey in its ATP594 tenement on the eastern flank of the Cooper Basin it believes will see it transition from explorer to producer.


Stephen Barry, Icon Energy chairman.
Icon managing director Ray James previously said that companies exploring for oil on the western flank of the Cooper Basin in South Australia have had great success in discovering commercial quantities of oil.
He said the eastern flank appears to be a ‘lookalike’ opportunity, which has been only sparsely explored.”
Icon wholly owns the tenement and is the operator.
Mr James said, if ATP594 is commercialised, Icon is sitting on sweet spot which “ certainly appears to be profitable,”
“We’re sitting right in the middle of an oil prone area and all the wells around us have shown this, we’ve just got to find the right reservoir ... and the 3D seismic survey is very capable of doing that.,” he said.
Mr James said he believed Icon had “come through tough times in a strong financial position and is looking forward to an exciting future”.
He said the company, with a market capitalisation of $20 million, has almost $16 million in the bank and no debt.
Icon posted a full-year 2016 net loss of $5.6 million, slightly better than the $5.8 million net loss a year earlier.
“The most disruptive chance for Icon would be the long term threat posed by the uptake of electric vehicles and the subsequent reduction in demand for oil,” Mr James said.
“In the short term, oil is an excellent investment because it brings cash flow immediately but the long-term future in our view is for gas.
“That is where Icon’s best opportunities lie, in gas for power generation.”