My understanding is that Scott has been open to proceeding alone in the exploration phase but due to the capital intensive nature of development, I think there will almost certainly be a JV partner for the development phase. Furthermore, given the current share price, I expect a JV to be the source of funding for the rest of the exploration phase too. Regarding development, although bank funding will likely be a part of it, similar to a down payment on a house, the bank will want the company putting capital into the project to act as a buffer on the loan. I don't see a bank funding exploration via loans, that just seems way too risky imo. Loans will only be used for actual development that will result in gas production (maybe pilot project will be eligible?).
Regarding a JV farmout, I've included two slides below from the March 21 2023 powerpoint presentation available on the Invictus website. Note the statement at the top of the first slide that says "IVZ will seek to replicate the stage strategy employed in the Lokichar Basin to deliver substantial value." At the bottom of the slide you can see that the staged approach for the Lokichar Basin consisted of 3 farm-out transactions (on a side note, the dollar numbers in the slide appear to be a bit off and I'm not sure what the third transaction is about). The ones I'm aware of are:
* Africa Oil farmout of 50% interest to Tullow Oil for around $35m USD in combination of cash and carry. This occurred prior to any wells being drilled (so no discovery yet).
* Africa Oil farmout of 25% to Maersk Oil after multiple discoveries. This brought in $907m USD as a combination of cash and carry
Given that we have a discovery but not multiple discoveries, we're somewhere in between the two. Personally I'm hoping for around $200m USD for giving up half our interest (40%). This would get us through the rest of the exploration phase.
The second slide is a table showing examples of farmout transactions that have occurred in Africa over the years. Unfortunately the table doesn't show the discovered resources at time of transaction but it still gives an idea of how large these transactions can be for world class discoveries like ours.
