WTI $37.51 -14c, Brent $40.26 -47c, Diff $2.75 -33c, NG $2.07 -6c

Oil price

The oil price continued to plumb the depths yesterday although did finish off the worst, WTI had seen its years low and Brent had been sub $40 during the day. The API inventory stats coming out after the close were modestly helpful, showing a draw of 1.6m barrels  and crude is up about 5o cents this morning. Even positive news from the EIA, again downgrading US production estimates couldnt rally the market which remains very nervous.

Ophir Energy

Ophir has announced this morning that it has signed Heads of Agreements for the LNG off-take from the Fortuna FLNG project with six counterparties, all of which they say are ‘established LNG buyers in European and Asian markets. Interestingly they are based on a variety of different pricing constructs in either European gas netbacks, oil indexation or a combination of both which gives considerable flexibility. They also include a number of pre-payments of ‘substantial quantities’ in the early years of the contract. But perhaps the most eye-catching part of the announcement is that on costs, where the gross capital expenditure required to first gas has been reduced from $800m to $600m, Ophirs stake being 80%. With such payments and lower costs Ophir is protected to a large degree and can ensure that it wont have to ‘give away’ any substantial value should they farm-out some of the project which is extremely likely.

Pantheon Resources

Pantheon goes from strength to strength and yesterday I was lucky enough to interview an ebullient Jay Cheatham on TipTV. I will not write many details here as all can be seen in the interview to which the link is added below. Suffice it to say that the shares, which were 14p when I first interviewed Jay a year ago were 110p yesterday morning and are 137p this morning, are still offering significant potential value even at the P50 number, let alone the PMean number.

:  http://www.tiptv.co.uk/finance/ceo-interview-pantheon-resources-able-to-achieve-a-margin-in-a-20-per-barrel-oil-world/

And finally…

Last night in the Champions League Man Who were overwhelmed by Wolsfburg which frankly just shouldn’t happen, as most people have said there is much work to be done and it’s the Boropa Cup on thursday nights for them, soon most Premiership fixtures will be on a Sunday especially if the Gooners go out tonight. The Noisy Neighbours won and are top of their group so plenty for their fans to crow about…

And Tyson Fury has already been stripped of one of his titles as the IBF take theirs away as he won’t do their mandatory defence preferring a rematch with Klitschko….