If so, EEL shareholders were not buying on the news; the company's stock fell half a cent to 84 pence on volume of 91,000 shares on London's AIM exchange, well below the IPO in December of 1 British Pound.
Here is the story:
ONGC bags oil block in Nigeria
Jyoti Mukul
March 10, 2005
NEW DELHI -- Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) has emerged a winner in the race for an oil block in Nigeria’s joint development zone. This will be ONGC Videsh Ltd’s (OVL) debut in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil producer and a major oil supplier to western Europe and the United States.
OVL, the overseas arm of ONGC, had in December entered into an agreement with Equator, the London Stock Exchange listed oil and gas exploration company, to jointly bid for oil blocks in West Africa.
ONGC and Equator had placed bids for blocks 2 and 4, which are in the joint development zone. The zone is estimated to hold reserves of 11 billion barrels and when fully operational could yield up to 3 million barrels a day.
Nigeria’s Environmental Remediation Holding Corporation (ERHC) holding 15-30 per cent in each of the Blocks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9, sought potential partners last year.
What the pairing may have won is not the only mystery. There is no source offered for the information, and it came out of New Delhi, far from the action in Africa.
The Indian half of the pair is a quasi-official arm of the coutry's largest corporation, Reliance Industries, while the Equator half is a creation of gold magnate Sam Jonah of Ghana and Nigerian oil executive Wade Cherwayko, a friend of ERHC Energy's Sir Omeka Offor.
The EEL bid is based on funds raised in its IPO and the fact that it has a substantial stake in Sao Tome's Exclusive Economic Zone, where it gets first dibs on two full blocks of its choice when bidding opens. ERHC Energy's rights then kick in and entitle it to two full signature bonus-free blocks and 15 percent of two fee-paid blocks.
Links between two paid bashers, Mongo and Monkeytrots, who have dogged the Raging Bull ERHE message board for months, and South Africa's onetime oil minister, Pik Botha, have led to suspicions here that their bashing is tied to Jonah's bid.
There have been at least two incidents in recent weeks of newspaper articles about the awards having been bolloxed up, and this may have been a third.
Yet the Indians and the Jonah group may well have won an operatorship, or a smaller part of a block, or simply may have claimed to have won a block in hopes of pumping Reliance, EEL or ONGC shares on the British or Bombay markets tomorrow in advance of a more disappointing result.
It is believed that all winners have already been notified by the JDZ, which is expected to award blocks within a few days and no later than March 18.
Here is the incomplete list provided by the JDA of bidders for Blocks 2 through 6 in Round 2:
Block 2 (7 bids)
Vintage Oil & Gas ($135 million)
Continental Oil & Gas ($120 million)
A & Hatman ($80 million)
Foby Engineering ($73 million)
Momoh Petroleum ($65 million)
Equator Exploration / ONGC Videsh ($65 million)
Devon Energy / Pioneer Natural Resources / ERHC Energy ($50 million)
Block 3 (6 bids)
Energy Equity Resources ($41 million)
Devon Energy / Pioneer Natural Resources / ERHC Energy ($40 million)
Anardako Petroleum Corporation ($40 million)
Sahara Energy Fields ($37.5 million)
Ophir Energy ($36 million)
Equinox Oil & Gas ($35 million)
Block 4 (10 bids)
ECL International of Nigeria ($175 million)
Conoil Producing ($150 million)
Anardako Petroleum Corporation ($90 million)
Hercules Oil / Centurion Energy / Stratar Energy Consortium ($81 million)
Atlas Petroleum ($70 million)
Energy Equity Resources ($67 million)
Overt Ventures and Equator Exploration Limited ($60 million)
ONGC Videsh and Godsonic Oil ($60 million)
Noble Energy / ERHC Energy ($57.285 million)
Block 5 (2 bids)
ICC-OEOC Consortium ($37 million)
Sahara Energy Fields ($35 million)
Block 6 (1 bid)
Filtim Huzod Oil & Gas ($45 million)
*Incomplete list. Source: Nigeria-DRSTP Joint Development Authority
5 comments:
Boy your team of reporters sure can do some spinning. The wording from the article is this:
"has emerged a winner in"
but your commentary is titled this:
"ONGC/EEL has won a JDZ block"
Not quite the same to me, but I'm no pro journalist.
ONGC/EEL probably did win block 2 or 4 or both. They outbid us in both blocks just barely. How did they know to barely outbid us? Did someone from the inside tip them off as to what our bid was and then they went barely over it? Emeka Offor a few weeks back stated something to the effect that ERHE woould probably win 1 block.
To the author of the post above this post, "This is not The Price Is Right".
Dr SE (Sam) Jonah
Nationality: Ghanaian
Positions Held: - Director, Lonmin Plc
- CEO and Group managing director, Ashanti Goldfields Co Ltd
- Director (Exec.), AngloGold Ashanti Ltd
- Chairperson, Limestone Products (Ghana)
- Chairperson, First Atlantic Merchant Bank Ltd
- Director, Defiance Mining Corp.
Rich pickings in African island oil
by Steve Hawkes
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THE tiny West African island group of Sao Tome e Principe has poor roads, rampant malaria and a population of about 150,000.
But now City punters are being given the chance to make money out of an oil bonanza that is set to transform one of the world's poorest countries.
Equator Exploration is looking to raise up to £20m through an Alternative Investment Market listing to hunt for oil in two huge deepwater blocks, each of them 4,000 square kilometres.
The company negotiated options for two blocks in 2001 after US giant ExxonMobil sparked an oil rush by finding deposits thought to hold up to 10bn barrels of crude.
Ever since, the country has been the centre of a fierce power struggle, centring on a dispute over territorial waters with nearby Nigeria and an ultimately doomed coup last year.
The Americans have moved in and are reportedly keen to turn pro-West Sao Tome into one of its most important strategic bases in the Gulf of Guinea.
Equator's roadshow hits London today and banker ODL Securities hopes the group will command a market value of £75m when shares begin trading at the start of next month.
Tony Clements, head of corporate finance at ODL, said: 'This is not an opportunistic move to take advantage of the high oil price. This company has been built up over the past five years and is not a dotcom conceived on a Sunday, listed on a Wednesday and bust by Friday.'
Based in the British Virgin Islands, Equator is chaired by Sir Sam Jonah, the respected president of miner AngloGold Ashanti. The day-to-day running is in the hands of chief executive Wade Cherwayko.
Cherwayko was close to Houston-based ERHC, the Nigerian company that controversially secured exclusive exploration rights to Sao Tome's waters in 1997.
West Africa has fast become one of the most desirable destinations for the oil industry, with an increasing amount of offshore drilling taking place in Equatorial Guinea and Mauritania.
Fields containing 17bn barrels of oil are due to come onstream in West Africa in the next five years, seven times the amount in the previous five years.
• Canada-based oil explorer Adulis Resources is raising £20m and taking a secondary listing on Aim at the end of the month. The group has put together a portfolio of 10 'high-risk' fields in Colombia.
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