The start of Friday’s session marked the rebirth of a well known name in the sector- Gulf Keystone Petroleum Limited (LON:GKP).
It followed the Kurdistan oiler’s bruising restructuring and a total of 21,910,523,553 new shares, the vast majority of which were issued to debtholders, were admitted to trading on the London Stock Exchange.
As a result of the heavily dilutive equity issue there are now a total of 22.9bn Gulf Keystone shares in issue.
Gulf Keystone reduced debt to by US$500mln to around US$100mln through the issue of the shares, with lenders receiving ending up with around 10% of the company.
Now, as Gulf Keystone’s share price stands at 1.25p, investors will be watching whether the once mighty oil stock can rise like a phoenix – or whether the embers fade further.
Takeover talk will likely be the main feature on investor’s agenda.
Also this week, Mosman Oil and Gas Limited (LON:MSMN) told investors that exploration work continues albeit within expenditure constraints.
In New Zealand, the company has now had a LIDAR survey flown over the Murchison permit; the data has been received and interpretation is now underway.
Separate surveys in Australia are scheduled to take place in the coming months.
The company continued to pursue acquisition opportunities but has not moved on any yet.
Meanwhile, Sound Energy PLC (LON:SOU) could be sitting on a super-giant gas field in Morocco, according to chief executive James Parsons.
In a presentation given to private investors in Edinburgh last week, which was filmed and is hosted on the company’s website, Parsons said the Tendrara discovery could amount to “tens of tcf” (trillion cubic feet).
Asked to be more specific, he said it might be of the order of ENI’s Zohr gas field, offshore Egypt, which weighs in at 30tcf.
The confidence of Sound’s management has been bolstered by the results from the company’s last well on Tendrara, TE-6, which flowed at a significantly higher rate than expected.
“What we learned after we drilled TE-6 well is all the various wells on this structure and beyond, including TE-2, which is 30km to the north-east, is they all sit on the same gas gradient,” said Parsons.
In other news, Gulfsands Petroleum plc (LON:GPX) has notified investors of two new board appointments, with Michael Kroupeev and Richard Milne joining as non-executive directors with immediate effect.
Kroupeev is a founder of Waterford Finance and Investment, which owns 37.32% of Gulfsands as well as substantial interests in other oil and gas companies.
Milne was most recently head of legal and commercial affairs at Petrofac, up until last year, and has spent some 15 years in corporate finance.
Iodine producer Iofina plc (LON:IOF) uses waste material, including from the oil industry to produce its iodine, and said this week it was on track to meet production targets in the second half of 2016.
The company revealed it produced 125.1 tonnes of crystalline iodine in the third quarter, taking output for the first nine months of the year from its five IOsorb plants in Oklahoma up to 380.7 tonnes. For the second half of 2016, the group is targeting production of between 250 and 270 tonnes.
As previously communicated, the company made some tweaks recently at three plants to improve consistency of brine input to its IOsorb plants, which is necessary under a changing regulatory environment, and Iofina continues to work closely with its partners on a variety of strategies to maximise productive throughput at all of its IOsorb plants.
DekelOil Public Limited (LON:DKL) has released a production and sales update for its West African palm oil operation, where the harvest has been shorter this year.
Dekel reported that 13.7% fewer bunches were harvested, 27,418 tonnes compared to 31,873 tonnes in the same period of last year.
Some 5,823 tonnes of crude palm oil was produced, versus 7,301, and sales amounted to 9,542 tonnes of CPO rather than 9,814 tonnes. CPO prices rose to €612 per tonne, from an average of €542 in the first six months of the year.