New Oil – A bidding War.

The Tullow Oil rumours are gaining pace. In 2009 we have seen them tipped as a possible takeover many times, and in some of the biggest financial publications.

Today Reuters has a story about three Chinese Oil Majors having a look at Tullow Oil.

These rumours are probably to be expected. Tullow Oil is a Junior with a big reputation, their many global assets are admired, in particular the findings in Ghana and Uganda. Whilst China, whose appetite for commodities has increased during the global economic downturn, is also looking for potential. Its state backed companies have been linked to several commodity plays.

With the Oil Price down at $40 a barrel, the Oil Majors have been linked with making a play for many of the Juniors. Recently there have been rumours that both Exxon and BP have considered making a play for Tullow.

Tullow gets a lot of attention due to the African findings, and as a popular Junior obviously makes good press, but many other Juniors will also be getting the once over.

What intrigues me is that what happens if China make a move, will Exxon and the other Majors compete, will the prices of the most attractive Juniors rocket ….. let hope so.

I do not currently hold Tullow (TLW.L)

more Chasing Profits Oil Posts

Kurdistan Oil exploration oil companies are hitting the headlines currently as more and more news is received from those with licences.  Here is an interesting article about our current favourite play, Vast Exploration.  The Qara Dagh licence is often described as a possible mini kirkuk.

September 03, 2009
Vast Exploration Hopes To Emulate Its Kurdistan Neighbour Heritage Oil As It Prepares For High Impact Drilling In 2010

These are exciting times for investors in Calgary’s Vast Exploration. The stock price of the TSX Venture-listed E&P, which is due to appear at oilbarrel.com’s September 15 conference in London, has increased three-fold this year as anticipation mounts ahead of first drilling on its prime asset, the Qara Dagh block in Kurdistan.

Two years ago Vast was a small time producer in Canada, where its properties in the Boyer and Barrhead areas of northern and central Alberta produced a grand total of 32 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The E&P minnow had ambitions to scale up its operations and saw a chance to seek growth opportunities far beyond the Calgary oil patch: in under-explored Kurdistan in northern Iraq, to be exact.

The company signed the PSC for the 846 sq km Qara Dagh block in May 2008, following eight months of competitive bidding and advanced negotiations with the Kurdistan Regional Government. Niko Resources operates the block with a 27 per cent interest, alongside Vast with 27 per cent and Groundstar Resources with six per cent. The KRG has a 20 per cent interest in the block, to be carried by the consortium, with the remaining 20 per cent reserved by the KRG for assigning to a third party of its choice.

This was a major step for Vast, exposing the Calgary firm to a world class proven hydrocarbon province where resources are measured in the billions rather than millions of barrels. The partners have quickly got to work on the block, this summer completing a 355 km 2D seismic shoot over the structure that dominates the block in order to identify a location for the first exploration well by the end of this month. The partners then expect to drill in Q2 2010.

Vast, which earlier this month closed a C$10 million private placing to fund its Qara Dagh PSC commitments, has been keen to highlight the success of its neighbour in Kurdistan: Heritage Oil Limited has made a major oil strike on the adjacent Miran Block, which lies to the north of Qara Dagh. Following the successes of Heritage’s Miran West-1 well, which encountered an estimated gross oil-bearing interval of 710 metres, the Miran West structure is reckoned to have estimated oil-in-place of between 2.3 and 4.2 billion barrels, of which an astonishing 50 to 70 per cent is thought to be recoverable due to the highly fractured nature of the reservoirs.

Vast’s president and CEO Ahmed Said said the Heritage Oil strike “further proves the tremendous hydrocarbon potential of the under explored Kurdistan Region of Iraq”. The success of the London-listed firm has certainly whetted the appetites of Vast’s investors, who will be keen for news of the selected first drilling target and the all-important first spud date, an event that should put further momentum behind the share price.

Taken from

http://www.oilbarrel.com/nc/news/display_news/article/vast-exploration-hopes-to-emulate-its-kurdistan-neighbour-heritage-oil-as-it-prepares-for-high-impac/771.html

How to Invest .. this site is hoping to provide a few ideas on markets, individual shares, commodities and other intriguing items, but what about a basic guide on how to invest.

Here are a couple of useful guides I’ve seen how to start investing, one is from Motley Fool targeted at US investors, the other is from Selftrade for the UK, but there are excellent points in there for where ever you are.

http://www.fool.com/howtoinvest

http://www.selftrade.co.uk/howtoinvest

Ino TV have a free to register service that offers free online videos on aspects of investing and trading that could also be useful.

http://www.ino.com/free

I like the Exploration Oil Companies. Apart from being a fan of Oil and the investment opportunities offered by the arrival of Peak Oil, the lure of the big gains offered by those who strike it big are too much to resist.

But there are many many Exploration Oil companies out there, so how do you pick a winner ?

I’d like to learn how to judge some of the data offered up by initial exploration data, along with the basics of understanding funding and how much cash these companies require to survive.  Also it would be cool to know more about IPO’s in the sector.

Currently I use the following places to gain information about some of the many companies in the Exploration sector.

Seeking Alpha,  is a useful site, based in the US, featuring articles by many contributors

OilBarrel, is my favourite site for the sector, it offers up news in the sector, and a summary of many of the companies

Two other sites have just come to my attention, and I will be spending time on them over the next few weeks, wikinvest and offshore magazine.

If anyone can make any more suggestions for any sources of info  for Oil Companies and Exploration Oil Companies, I’d be grateful.

Tidal Power and The North of Scotland have always been seen as an ideal partnership. The Orkneys in particular have near perfect conditions.
I believe that plots of seabed are going to be auctioned to alternative energy companies shortly.

It will be interesting to see who enters bids and how they see the future for tidal power in the area. The cost of transporting the power could be high and its this area that intrigues me. I have seen mention of building industrial units closer to the sea to reduce the transportation costs, and it will be good to see other plans and answers to this problem.
No individual names stand out at the moment, but I will continue to monitor the possibilities that Tidal Power will being.

In the recent budget there was some talk about making continued investment in the North Sea Oil Fields attractive.

This has been done by offering tax breaks to those developing and exploring some of the smaller fields. With the lower Oil Price many of these fields, which are often harder to reach, are unattractive to investors. The tax breaks hope to change that.

The breaks will be called a ‘field allowance’ and it has been decided that a smaller field is one with up to 20million barrels of Oil.

Venture Production (VPC.L) is an Oil Company working exactly these types of fields, and is one of the shares tipped to benefit.

Mobile Phones in India are on the increase in a big way, Reuters report that on the back of 28 million plus new customers in 2009 so far, another 15 million new Customers have been signed in March.

There is obviously a huge market in the emerging markets, and as Reuters suggests, the networks are starting to expand to rural and smaller areas. So in India and other Emerging Markets these figures will continue to improve.

The other BRIC markets, Latin America and Africa are also experiencing a large uptake in this sector. Many countries do not have a good exisiting communication structure, and therefore not the extent of landlines seen in other areas, so mobile phones will cover that gap. We have mentioned Vodafone in Africa in an earlier article.

So who wins ?  at the top of the list are the Operators and the Mobile Phone Manufacturers.

Reliance Communications, BSNL, Vodafone Essar and Bharti Airtel are the biggest operators and have taken more than 75% of the new customers between them.

Nokia, the worlds biggest manufacturer of handsets is set to gain, and HTC are aiming to double its numbers of mobile phones in India over the next few years.

At the time of writing, I  do not hold shares in any of these companies.

As we are exploring all possible areas form which we can take a profit we were alerted to ‘The Google Money System’, a method to make money online which sounds as though it has ties to Google.

It doesn’t,  here is a link to the offical Google support forum for more details.

If you are interested in Affliate Marketing schemes then you could find some useful resources here.

Crude Oil Price. An interesting read on the Telegraph online saying what we have have felt for a while, and that is that the current price of Oil is too low.
It suggests that we need a sustained Oil Price of above $70 a barrel, although we think that figure needs to be nearer $80 or even $90.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/crude-oil-price-to-rebound.html