Friday, January 24, 2020 / 04:27PM
/ By James Burgess, Oilprice.com / Header
Image Credit: www.inc.com
Since the turn of the year, energy stocks have become a put
owner's dream--what with the energy sector virtually generating the worst
returns of all US sectors.
And the harder you look, the worse it gets,
making it nearly impossible to find value in this gridlocked mess.
One of the industry's popular benchmarks,
the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration
ETF (XOP) has tanked 30% over the past year, badly
underperforming the broader market all thanks to a perfect storm of supply and
demand shocks coupled with slowing economies.
This comes to nobody's surprise, considering
that small-cap oil and gas stocks have higher leverage than large-caps. XOP
invests in a lot of highly leveraged small-and mid-cap oil and gas companies in
the exploration sector that tend to decline significantly on concerns about
liquidity and debt repayments, but also bounce back quickly due to supply
shocks like the Saudi Aramco drone attacks or, better still, a significant discovery.
Nothing quite tickles the fancy of energy
investors like a giant oil or gas find.
But here's the secret sauce: stocks of small-cap
companies tend to enjoy serious leverage whenever they strike oil, whereas the
heavyweights, well, not so much.
You don't have to look very far for an example:
shares of ExxonMobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM) are down more than 20% since the company
announced a 14-strong string of good discoveries off the coast of Guyana in
2015, one of its best finds ever.
That's because companies like Exxon have their
fingers in too many pies, and their share prices depend on many variables.
Junior explorers, however, tend to have a singular focus.
You can buy them up for pennies, and when and if they strike
oil, it's a shareholder bonanza of big returns.
Granted, state-owned
behemoths and giant energy companies tend to have more than their
fair share of discoveries. But that does not in any way mean smaller companies
have been missing out on the action--on the contrary, they have time and again
showed up the big boys and earned their bragging rights in the arena, too.
Here are some of the biggest discoveries made or
potential for discoveries that might be made by smaller oil and gas exploration
companies:
#1 Biggest Oil Discovery in the
Australian North West Shelf
For more than 15 years, oil exploration
companies had been coming up empty in the once-fecund Australian North West
Shelf. Nearly everybody had given up searching for liquids in the offshore block.
That is, until block partners Quadrant Energy
and Carnarvon Petroleum hit paydirt in 2018 after making what is billed as
"Australia's most
exciting oil find in decades".
Quadrant and Carnarvon have emerged as some of
the top wildcatters to watch in the region after uncovering a find containing
some 171 million barrels of oil. You would have to go back to 1996 to find an
oil discovery in the region above 100 million barrels.
Shares of Carnarvon ($555 million market cap)
have jumped more than 150% since the discovery was announced, while Quadrant
was acquired by Australian natural gas giant Santos Ltd (STOSF) in
2018.
Actually, these guys got lucky. The companies
were prospecting for 545 bcf of gas but ended up with something far more
valuable. After all, oil has a significantly lower risk profile than gas and
does not require expensive infrastructure or gas contracts.
In other words, oil is both easier and faster to
monetize than gas.
So, what are the expected pickings here?
Before the latest appraisal was carried out,
Quadrant executive Fred Wehr had gushed:
"...the low case is solidly commercial, the mid-case is
awesome and the upside is staggering."
After the appraisal, Santos chief executive
Kevin Gallagher revealed that the find was actually "bigger than
expected".
So, we can surmise that Quadrant thinks the find
is awesome-to-staggering since it's well above the base case estimate of 150
million barrels of oil.
#2 Namibia's Eagle Ford
Reconnaissance Energy Africa (TSX-V: RECO, OTCMKTS:LGDOF) is the
smallest of the three small-cap discoveries, with a market cap of only $39
million, with shares selling for under $0.80. Yet, it's sitting on a shale
basin that's 25,000 square kilometers, similar in size to the Eagle Ford basin.
Yes, that's right: This tiny explorer just acquired a 90% exploration permit
interest to the entire, 6.3-million-acre Kavango Basin in Namibia-Africa's area
which includes shale geology.
It's quite unique for a company this small to
have a basin this big, but while few have heard of the company, everyone in the
business has heard of the geologist who examined the data on this basin.
They've also heard of Recon's CEO, Jay Park QC-the former director of Caracal
Energy, which was acquired by giant Glencore in 2014 for $1.3 billion.
Bill Cathey is the geoscientist who looked at
initial data. When the Company brought the magnetic survey data from Namibia's
Kavango Basin to Cathey, Cathey said the basis is a 30,000-foot sedimentary
basin. He also said that all basins of this depth, anywhere else in the world,
produce commercial hydrocarbons. Recon management dropped everything, so the
story goes, got on a plane, and finalized the rights to the giant Kavango
Basin.
So, now, tiny Reconnaissance is sitting on a
basin similar in size to the Eagle Ford.
Reconnaissance has a 90% interest in a 4-year
exploration license leading to a 25-year production license starting on
commercial discovery.
The Kavango Basin is filled by the Karoo
Supergroup of rocks, and it's also been shown to have the same depositional
environment as Shell's Whitehill Permian shale play, part of the Karoo
Supergroup to the south in South Africa.
Sproule--a tier 1 resource assessment
company--estimated that Kavango has a potential 12 billion barrels of oil or
119 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. That's just for the shale, not counting
any conventional potential.
The first wells are slated to be drilled in Q2
2020.
Namibia is one of the most oil and gas
production friendly governments in Africa. Ask Shell, or Exxon, both of whom
are acquiring assets here, making Recon (TSX-V: RECO, OTCMKTS:LGDOF) a natural
acquisition target if a commercial discovery is made.
#3 Mid-Tier Mania
Eco Atlantic Oil and Gas Company Ltd (CVE:EOG) is a
$104-million Canadian explorer whose shares popped 160% in August following the
announcement of back-to-back oil discoveries in the fabled Guyana-Suriname
Basin, where Exxon has made 14 discoveries in a short time span.
Shares of Eco's partner in Guyana, Tullow Oil
Plc (LON:TLW) with a
$1.03-billion market cap, have been less impressive after rallying 20% in the
same period. Tullow is bigger and there's less leverage from one new discovery.
Eco has reported that Tullow Oil-operated Joe-1
has struck high-quality oil in the sandstone reservoir in offshore Guyana in an
area believed to extend from Exxon's Stabroek acreage. The Joe-1 discovery came
just a month after the two successfully drilled Jethro-1 giving encouraging
hints that they are right on the money.
Although the companies are yet to conduct a
detailed evaluation of the Orinduik, it's estimated to hold some 3.98 billion
barrels of prospective resources, thus giving Eco ~600mln barrels for its 15%
stake in the project.
This, however, might be just the beginning of
good tidings for Eco shareholders as the company has announced that it has
ample resources to drill even more wells.
#4 - Oil Majors Are Choosing
Investments More Carefully
Africa has long been a hotspot for oil and gas
majors, but things have gotten rocky in recent years, especially in Nigeria.
Nigeria is home to about 37 billion barrels in
oil reserves. And while it's got some 32 active oil rigs out there, only 81
wells were completed last year - down from 141 in 2014.
Since oil prices started tumbling in 2014, the
government has been shaking down oil companies, with back taxes and new
legislation. Now, it wants majors Chevron, Shell and French Total SA to fork
out around $62 billion. It claims
in was short-changed under a revenue-sharing agreement dating back to the
1990s.
Chevron (NYSE:CVX) is seeking to sell several Nigerian oilfields,
and it isn't the first: Exxon (NYSE:XOM) and Shell
(NYSE:RDS.A) have both been reducing their footprint in
the country.
Now, Nigeria is proposing new legislation that
would increase taxation on the oil industry. The bill would add another 3-10
percent in royalty rates at oil prices between $50 and $80 per barrel.
Nigeria's current system gives Nigeria between 60 percent and 70 percent of all
deepwater revenues, which includes taxes, royalties, along with state-run
NNPC's share of production.
While Nigeria has given majors some pushback,
other countries have been a bit more accommodating.
Take Suriname, for instance. It is quickly
becoming a hotspot for ambitious majors looking to leverage its massive
reserves.
Total (NYSE:TOT) recently
announced a major oil discovery offshore Suriname with its partner, Apache
(NYSE:APA). John J. Christmann, Apache CEO and President noted,
"The well proves a working hydrocarbon system in the first two play types
within Block 58 and confirms our geologic model with oil and condensate in
shallower zones and oil in deeper zones. Preliminary formation evaluation data
indicates the potential for prolific oil wells."
British Petroleum (NYSE:BP) is another major eyeing
"off-the-beaten-path" opportunities in Africa. While BP has some oil
assets in the region, it is focusing heavily on renewable power generation and
natural gas production. Recently, it began work on a project in Mauritania and
Senegal. The company noted, "We see this as the start of a new chapter for
Africa's energy story."
**IMPORTANT! BY READING OUR CONTENT YOU EXPLICITLY AGREE TO
THE FOLLOWING. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY**
Forward-Looking Statements. Statements contained
in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements
that involve various risks and uncertainty affecting the business of Recon. All
estimates and statements with respect to Recon's operations, its plans and
projections, oil prices, recoverable oil, production targets, production and
other operating costs and likelihood of oil recoverability are forward-looking
statements under applicable securities laws and necessarily involve risks and
uncertainties including, without limitation: risks associated with oil and gas
exploration, development, exploitation and production, geological risks,
marketing and transportation, availability of adequate funding, volatility of
commodity prices, imprecision of reserve and resource estimates, environmental
risks, competition from other producers, government regulation, dates of
commencement of production and changes in the regulatory and taxation
environment. Actual results may vary materially from the information provided
in this document, and there is no representation that the actual results
realized in the future will be the same in whole or in part as those presented
herein. Other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those
contained in the forward-looking statements are also set forth in filings that
Recon and its technical analysts have made, We undertake no obligation, except
as otherwise required by law, to update these forward-looking statements except
as required by law.
Exploration for hydrocarbons is a speculative
venture necessarily involving substantial risk. Recon's future success will
depend on its ability to develop its current properties and on its ability to
discover resources that are capable of commercial production. However, there is
no assurance that Recon's future exploration and development efforts will
result in the discovery or development of commercial accumulations of oil and
natural gas. In addition, even if hydrocarbons are discovered, the costs of
extracting and delivering the hydrocarbons to market and variations in the
market price may render uneconomic any discovered deposit. Geological
conditions are variable and unpredictable. Even if production is commenced from
a well, the quantity of hydrocarbons produced inevitably will decline over
time, and production may be adversely affected or may have to be terminated
altogether if Recon encounters unforeseen geological conditions. Adverse
climatic conditions at such properties may also hinder Recon's ability to carry
on exploration or production activities continuously throughout any given year.
Disclaimers
ADVERTISEMENT. This communication is not a recommendation to buy or sell
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Link to original article: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/4-Promising-Oil-Trends-To-Watch-In-2020.html
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