+- ShareholdersUnite Forums (http://shareholdersunite.com/mybb)
+-- Forum: Companies (http://shareholdersunite.com/mybb/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: InterOil Forum (http://shareholdersunite.com/mybb/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Thread: We need a date for the dance (/showthread.php?tid=515)
- Supsup - 03-15-2012
I hope Phil et all can print a deal, don't be a Jerry Yang, more important to do something
Print a deal and our world changes for the better
- Palm - 03-15-2012
If we don't think he/they can "print a deal", what are we doing here? We're beyond thinking they will do it, and it will be done when the time is right.
- ebster123 - 03-15-2012
Palm, please excuse my forward comment but I am not here for the management I am here for the in the ground resources. My posts have been consistent. I would be happy to see them seal a deal ASAP but I have felt for some time they have taken longer than many would have to seal a deal and reward investor investment.
- Gator - 03-15-2012
We don't need a date; we have had plenty of them: YE 2010, 1Q 2011, first half 2011, YE 2011, 1st Q 2012. What we need is a signed, money changing hands, DEAL.
- jft310 - 03-15-2012
IOC is in a dynamic situation. The CEO wants to maximize shareholder value.Thats in his and other shareholders best interests.
They have changed plans several times and each time the dynamics have improved.While delays are frustrating , making the LNG plants larger and quicker is what Duma wants and IOC wants. Anyone who thinks the Japanese and Korean govts don't need and want IOC's assets needs to sell now.
Dealing one govt to another is International and that means time.The leak in the WSJ tells the tale .Gotta wait for the govt's to work out the details. More news Monday.
Blowing smoke today is a waste of time.
- Palm - 03-15-2012
Ebster, right now you have no choice but to be here for the management; the resource is nothing until they bring the right deal together to fund drilling operations and declare FID. They are doing all they can to make this happen and in fact are still well away from the required mid-2014 FID date. People have to be reminded who/what we are dealing with. Exxon/Oil Search "own" the most influence in PNG currently as far as petroleum resources/reserves. NO ONE, including IOC will beat the PNG LNG project to first production; won't happen. Exxon is tough enough to compete with in this regard, but sometimes people underestimate OSH's "power"/influence in PNG. several years ago OSH could claim this statement, "It is the most powerful company in Papua New Guinea, where it is also listed, and the country's biggest investor and taxpayer. It has also emerged as the largest of all Pacific islands-based companies." That statement was made BEFORE they joined forces with Exxon on the PNG LNG project. IOC would love to get everything done, FID declared ("Management is FID ready"), start gearing up to produce LNG in 2014 BEFORE Exxon, but I believe the chances of that are pretty slim. I believe they will still hit the 2014-15 necessary window, but remember the last necessary time-to-build estimate we had? 30 months after FID declared. That's Sept 2014 in they declare FID now.
We constantly get updates on the PNG LNG project; today we received another one; that they will hit early 2014. I very much believe there is conscious (understandably) effort to keep IOC "at bay", but still be able to hit the necessary window. IOC needs that, and PNG needs that. I also believe there is a tipping point where the PNG LNG project can be guaranteed to beat IOC to the mark, then suddenly the clouds will break and things will fall into place for IOC. This is all too obvious I believe. That's why we can only let management do what it can (again, "We are FID ready) to work through this process.
Here is a long, but very worthwhile read on OSH and its history, again written before PNG LNG and Exxon. Please also note the ownership that the PNG government has in OSH; pretty substantial. So the government stands to gain its royalties and taxes from PNG LNG; they also stand to gain a lot for a very successful OSH as an investment.
"Oil Search's great corporate turn-around
Rowan Callick
Oil Search, one of Papua New Guinea's oldest companies, was for decades a tiny, hopeful player operating in one of the least fashionable business locations on the globe and stuck in the lower reaches of the Australian stock market.
Peter Botten (right)... accustomed to being confronted by tribal warriors.
�I remember the bad old days,� says the company's managing director, Peter Botten, whose perseverance has contributed massively to one of the great corporate turn-arounds.
His memories of the hard yards make these days all the sweeter.
Oil Search has become one of Australia's hottest stocks, its share price soaring 170 percent in the last year. It is the most powerful company in Papua New Guinea, where it is also listed, and the country's biggest investor and taxpayer. It has also emerged as the largest of all Pacific islands-based companies.
Success has been sometime coming. Botten became managing director more than 11 years ago, making him one of the longest-serving leaders of any large regional company. In an average week, he has to perform probably to more audiences, certainly more varied audiences than a leading actor. He has apartments in Port Moresby and Sydney, and tends to get back to the family home in Perth-where his wife, Jill Gillin, and two children, aged 23 and 17, live-for just two or three weekends a month, arriving often on Friday evenings and leaving on Sunday afternoons.
Success sometime coming
A recent page from his diary is typical. After talking through the 2005 half-year results-profit up 53 percent-with analysts and journalists in Sydney, he hosted a dinner for institutional shareholders in Melbourne, and then joined David Lesar, the president of leading US oil-field service provider Halliburton, in Brisbane and flew up with him to PNG, to Port Moresby, and on to the operations in the Southern Highlands.
In PNG, Botten frequently briefs the cabinet-the government is the biggest single shareholder, with about 18 percent-as well as other key stakeholders. Huli landowners are near the top of the list.
Botten is now long accustomed to being confronted by tribal warriors with painted faces, brandishing spears, bows and arrows. The custom is to encourage the honoured visitor, like Botten, to demonstrate his courage by appearing undaunted, thus also honouring the tribe by their hosting such a brave guest.
Vision
He is more than comfortable having the PNG government as a major shareholder. It has the legal option now of also obtaining up to 16 percent in the A$3.5 billion Southern
Highlands-to-Brisbane gas pipeline project, set for the formal go-ahead early next year.
Botten says that, however tempted the government may be to realise that option for a stake by selling it-especially with a national election less than two years away-he is advising it to hang on and reap steady rewards through a couple of generations. For the project too, it helps to have the government on the team.
�PNG has had a vision (of a major gas project) the market hasn't recognised, and now, after copping flak, it is on the cusp of realising it,� he says.
Botten, originally from England, worked as a sedimentologist for a French government corporation after graduating from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College. He worked chiefly in Africa, including a stint of 14 months in the mid-Sahara, where his wife-they had met when 17-also stayed.
No one wanted to come to Australia for the French group in 1978, so he volunteered. Then he began working for the Kuwaiti national oil company KUFPEC, and later for Petroz.
He began working as a consultant for Oil Search in 1992 not long after the company had begun producing oil for the first time after 60 years of searching in PNG. Two years later, he became managing director.
�People were asking what to do with the company's first-ever revenue stream-invest elsewhere or stay in PNG?� Botten suggested the latter.
�The first few years were great,� he says, with 120,000 barrels a day coming out of the Kutubu field. Then the oil price slid, and the oil majors began to lose interest in PNG.
Oil Search bought out BP and concentrated its efforts on getting the majors back investing.
�There were only so many assets, and we didn't operationally control them.�
In 2002, the company was stuck, its share price reflected its dilemma, and the South Australian-based oil company Santos was threatening to take over.
Botten's response was to merge Oil Search with the government-owned resources company Orogen, after briefing the PNG cabinet. That gave it 50 percent of the country's oil business.
Then came what Botten calls �the pivotal point�-when Oil Search took out Chevron's PNG assets and became the operator of the country's oil fields, and owner of 75 percent of the oil business and half the gas reserves.
The soaring price of oil since then has at last enabled the company to reward its shareholders, including the government, generously through dividends for their loyalty.
Oil Search has been one of PNG's biggest promoters over the last decade, he says. But this has been easier over the last couple of years, which have brought greater political and economic stability, �and our operations have been stable, and we've shown you can deliver a good profit there.�
Seemingly interminable delays in the gas project and questions over oil production, held down the share price. Eighteen months ago Botten focused on �de-risking� the gas project. Oil Search bought an option for a large volume of gas from the operator, ExxonMobil, and helped push the project into front-end engineering and design (FEED), in effect the point of no return that almost inevitably leads to construction.
Generation change
This has since coincided, Botten says, with a �generation change� in the energy scene in Australia that has opened up fresh options, including a partnership with AGL.
New connections, including with Santos, are now being worked at. �Left at the status quo,� Botten says, �the gas project would have died last year. It needed a good mix of partners and stakeholders.�
Besides sending gas down to Queensland, Oil Search and its partners are also likely to fuel a Japanese liquefied petroleum gas plant in PNG, costing about US$300 million to US$400 million, set to be built by Mitsubishi Gas and Itochu.
�It's through these second and third-stage projects that the gas will bring real development,� says Botten. The manoeuvring by players along the pipeline, seeking a bigger stake in the action than royalties and equity, is already reaching fever point.
The project, says Botten, has decided to �try and change this benefit stream.� This means extending the sub-contractor pool beyond the landowner companies already participating in the oil-production process.
Port Moresby-based lawyer Richard Kassman says: �This concept-apparently pushed by Oil Search-ignores existing Incorporated Landowner Groups who under Chevron (the previous operator bought out by Oil Search) established in many cases very successful companies.
�These companies are not without their warts and pimples, and much effort must be put in to enhance accountability and transparency. But they are working well...and they represent traditional clan groupings and hierarchies, key ingredients for peace and harmony. These are not uncivilised tribesmen.�
Botten responds: �Some leaders have become used to being directors, getting money and four-wheel-drive vehicles, and want to ensure the gravy train continues.
�But the project has put it to the government and landowners that an umbrella company should be established that looks at business development opportunities from the Hides field right down to the Gulf of Papua.�
The aim is to avoid having �companies holding you to ransom for contracts up and down the pipeline,� to broaden the base of those providing inputs and receiving benefit, and to manage �the hundreds of contracts that will spin out from such a major project�.
When Oil Search took over the oil operations from Chevron, �we reinstated landowner community affairs programmes and expanded them,� he says.
And the company ensured a happier shareholder base as well, by stabilising and then expanding oil production after years of decline-a shift that will probably be maintained, he says, through to 2009 when gas production is expected to come on stream.
Oil Search does not hedge (insure against a falling price for its product)-enabling it to benefit fully from recent soaring prices, especially gratifying to Botten as it comes from fields formerly �seen as having nothing left.�
He also sees it as crucial to keep costs down, cutting them by 10 percent since taking over from Chevron. Oil Search now produces about 55,000 barrels a day for a cost per barrel in the upper US$40s, the same cost as four years ago. This will rise, though, when two new fields come on stream later this year, pushing production to 70,000 barrels a day.
Botten has to drive both these operational gains and the overall vision of PNG's biggest business. He says: �A lot of us in Oil Search are very passionate about following that vision, and there are not many places where you can make such a difference.�"
http://www.islandsbusiness.com/islands_business/index_dynamic/containerNameToReplace=MiddleMiddle/focusModuleID=5498/overideSkinName=issueArticle-full.tpl
- Palm - 03-15-2012
This recap on Oil Search from last fall mentions the PNG government ownership in OSH; they have a "majority interest"
"Oil Search has been in business since 1929. Today, as one of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) largest companies, it operates all of its home country’s oil and gas fields. The company has a 29% interest in a local Exxon Mobil led-LNG project which is anticipated to double PNG’s GDP when production exports plateau in 2014. Oil Search is publicly listed on both the Australian and Port Moresby Stock Exchanges and majority ownership is held by the PNG government."
http://www.corporateregister.com/reviews/item/?n=118