Clive Palmer buying, bidding, both ?

[davidhmtk]

Palmer, an Aussie mining billionaire with mines in PNG :

1.  Has just bought into gas/oil prospecting licences because they were on the edges of Triceratops (per Blair Price, Friday)

2.  Is the biggest funder of Duma's URP party

3...Probably didn't sign a standstill agreement

Someone was a 1m share buyer last week (my guess) and there is big buying interest today

......dots

[sageo]

David-If what I have recently read about Palmer is true,he is re-considering XOM's offer to JV wiyh his 3 ppl's in the gulf. he just"might" be sitting on more golden eggs!! (as Pet called them in his August 2011 post)

[Stavros]

David:

There are 48 Million InterOil shares outstanding.
75% of them are held by institutions, Richard Chandler, IOC "insiders" and retail dorks like us.
Very few shares are available for accumulation.

Then we have nearly 11 Million short shares that have been borrowed.

It seems to me that if someone bought 1 Million shares last week, the impact on the PPS would have been much greater.
So .... can you please elaborate to us as to how you come to the conclusion that someone (you speculate Clive Palmer) accumulated 1 Million shares in the past 5 trading days?

Thanks very much for your insights.

[davidhmtk]

David: There are 48 Million InterOil shares outstanding. 75% of them are held by institutions, Richard Chandler, IOC "insiders" and retail dorks like us. Very few shares are available for accumulation. Then we have nearly 11 Million short shares that have been borrowed. It seems to me that if someone bought 1 Million shares last week, the impact on the PPS would have been much greater. So .... can you please elaborate to us as to how you come to the conclusion that someone (you speculate Clive Palmer) accumulated 1 Million shares in the past 5 trading days? Thanks very much for your insights.

Mostly I saw a similar trading style - buying everything being sold and right away buying enough more to raise the price a nickel or so.  Patient and not rattled by the shorts trying to break the rally.  I thought I saw their fingerprints again Fri (1/4) in the afternoon.  Why didn't the pps rise more?  There was a lot of retail selling (odd lots) and continued shorting (their usual "bomb the buy orders".   The buy style looked different from Chandler's.  It seemed to me to be someone refreshingly unafraid of our sad sac shorts - possibly a Fidelity fund - but newly possible was the billionaire and largest fundraiser for Duma's political party who was giving interviews about how excited he was by Triceratops.

[Stavros]

Thanks for your reply David.

But it seems to me that if someone picked up a million shares (more than 2% ownership of IOC) the PPS would have risen further.
After all, the PPS was north of $85 for an extended time before the +27.5% PNG ownership nonsense.

I'm hoping that we get some sot of a deal in the coming months.

As you've seen, I'm hoping that a few interested parties now realize that the PNG political risk in minimal and will bid against each other to acquire the whole enchilada at $20 billion.

[davidhmtk]

Thanks for your reply David. But it seems to me that if someone picked up a million shares (more than 2% ownership of IOC) the PPS would have risen further. After all, the PPS was north of $85 for an extended time before the +27.5% PNG ownership nonsense. I'm hoping that we get some sot of a deal in the coming months. As you've seen, I'm hoping that a few interested parties now realize that the PNG political risk in minimal and will bid against each other to acquire the whole enchilada at $20 billion.

Political risk is minimal?  The record of direct action by upset stakeholders in Exxon's project has to be noticed as well as the uncertainty created by IOC offering an additional 27% of its first gas field to the gov't ,which resulted in a positive approval by the NEC of the project amendments in principle.  The additional % still hasn't delivered a signed PA and until "commercial terms" are satisfactorily defined on paper, it seems unwise to think that there is no possibiliity that the gov'ts gas committee is not trying to squeeze out addl support for their budget problems.  I do think that the Nov 30 drilling obligation extension was huge - if the gov't was going to try to replace IOC with Shell or Palmer, it would not have agreed to an extension.  On balance political risk is low, but not minimal.