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The Pay Zone: Oil Price, Fastnet Oil & Gas, Iofina, BP and finally..............

Published: 11:47 18 Dec 2013 GMT

no_picture_pai

WTI $97.22 -26c, Brent $110.41 -6c, Differential $13.19 +20c, NG $4.29 +1c

Oil price

Its beginning to feel a bit like Christmas although I haven’t been able to get any Christmas pictures up, the new system is proving to be a nightmare for pictures and charts but I will get there in the end! News is a  bit thin especially as the oil market has virtually shut up shop ahead of the FOMC press conference this evening. It will be the last one by Big Ben and although there are mixed views, I am standing by my prediction that tapering will not start until the spring.

The API stats actually showed a fall in stocks of 2.5m barrels against consensus of 3.6m but interestingly gasoline stocks were down by 481/- barrels against a forecast increase of 1.9m.

In the UK this morning a clean sweep 9-0 in the Bank of England minutes and unemployment rate came in at 7.4% against median estimates of 7.6%.

In the Ukraine the Russians are tying up the President in knots trying to keep the pro-EU populace in their place, promising $15bn investment in the country’s bonds and a temporary cut in the gas price if he behaves himself. This one may run and run, I am often asked about investing in companies in these countries and this is the sort of reason I usually give for avoiding the area, its hard enough to make money without hooky Presidents getting involved!

BP (LON:BP.)

What looks like a really good discovery in the Gulf of Mexico for BP at Gila, described as ‘significant’ it is in the Palaeogene and would be a welcome relief for the company especially as the FT reports this morning that lawyers for the company ‘mislead’ the court in the on-going bid battle.

Fastnet (LON:FAST)

Its a funny old world when a company announces what appears to me to be  a very good farm-out offshore Morocco and the shares continue to fall. Fastnet has achieved a good deal here, $3.2m of back costs and a 2 well carry, either an exploration well and an appraisal or 2 exploration wells which combined add up to a $200m saving.

The company have a poor face to investors though, a presentation to Interactive Investors recently was apparently badly received and todays conference call was ten minutes late and a complete dogs dinner, its a shame when the underlying is so good but the presentation is so poor,  I intend to try and get a meeting with the company as it looks pretty good value to me although the market sees it as very high risk, at least its funded now. Chart by the way is a complete mare, going through resistance levels all the time, definitely one to watch for next year though.

Iofina (LON:IOF)

This used to be a dream stock and one I really wanted to be involved in, after a great start and repeatedly hitting targets it has recently had at least two profit warnings and yesterdays took 28% off the price, today it is down another 9%. On this basis I remain very cautious as although the company say that the most recent warning is merely shipments delayed from 2013 into 2014 I want to see exactly how it is going to look next year before dipping my toe back in.

And finally…

It was the Clueless Cup last night and whilst the noisy neighbours went through easily enough against Leicester, Chelski were defeated by Sunderland much to the annoyance of the chosen one. Tonight Man U go to Stoke and the Hammers visit manager-less Spurs.

Watford have appointed Giuseppe Sannino as their new manager with astonishing haste, particularly as he has had the sack more times than a Christmas postman, I would be horrified if I was a Watford fan.

Mr Djokovic has appointed Boris Becker as his new coach, looking for his broom cupboard expertise I imagine…

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