I took the opportunity the other day to spend a bit of time with Tony Durrant as a catch up and also so he could correct any errors I might have made in my recent podcast. There is little doubt that whoever you talk to that Solan has been a huge disappointment and the company are lucky to have been able to carry the passenger as long as this. The company have spent ‘far too much money on it’ and whilst the P1 well is producing 10-11/- b/d the P2 well has significant water injection problems and is doing 1-3/- b/d and the company needs to find a solution. Unfortunately there isn’t an obvious one around the corner, a frac job might be possible when the weather improves and a sidetrack well is a possibility but unlikely before April 2018. Putting in a call to Dr Trice who is nearby is a possibility but a long shot in my view.
On a much more positive note it seems that Catcher is up with, if not ahead of events and is planned to leave Singapore in late June/early July and will take around 45 days to get to the North Sea and first oil still expected in the 4th quarter. With work going better than expected the company are already talking about de-bottlenecking and the current plan for 50/- b/d could be nearer 65/- b/d if the FPSO can handle it. Also continuing to impress is Tolmount which was definitely sold too cheaply and will actually take much more investment than first envisaged, indeed one can expect a farm-down of around 20% at some stage. There is added value to Prems due to their tax losses and here one might find a potential buyer amongst the growing army of infrastructure funds who could make it work for them.
The market has taken the view that Sea Lion is on the back burner, especially with the bank debt being renegotiated at the moment. TD said that they were ‘digging their heels in’ with the banks to ensure that they had the flexibility to go ahead with both this and Tolmount but it too needs a funding package. They need to find a partner, same old, same old, but with the relationship with Argentina being re-kindled more doors should be opening all the time. Indeed it in this day of flexible financing it could be that a service company might find it interesting, after all there are 20 wells in phase one and 30 in phase two and over ten years of work for somebody. Given the falling industry costs and that at $55, margins are higher than with oil at $110 one might have expected some action here, after all developments of such size are creating vibes around the industry elsewhere. Elsewhere there are exciting possibilities in Mexico and with the Tuna project both of which are considered by the technical department to be most interesting.
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André Kostolany
MfG
Palaimon