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Was there ever any hope for an outfit that can't spell the name of its CEO correctly (Malcolm) and the hard rock that needs drilling through (dolerite)? See the iBox.
‘The Advocate’ (Burnie) June 7
Government put under fire
Miner lodges official complaint
By Chris Pippos
A Company with links to US-based churches, currently embroiled in an ambitious “multibillion dollar” legal claim against the State Government, is now taking its gripes to Tasmania’s Integrity Commission.
Great South Land Minerals (GSLM) Limited, which claims to have “500 loyal Tasmanian shareholders”, has lodged papers with the commission ”concerning our belief that there has been collusion in the act of improperly allocating a portion of our Tasmanian oil and gas assets”.
The company is also involved in a court case seeking compensation over the same matters, which has been dubbed by Greens MP Kim Booth as “extravagant” and “laughable”.
In a statement the company said the Integrity Commission “investigation is being initiated to ensure that appropriate discretional and ethical conduct has been observed”.
(break)
It (i.e. the company) was one of several companies, including an unrelated one with links to ex-Premier Paul Lennon’s chief of staff, Daniel Leesong, currently in the hunt for oil at various locations, including the North-West and Central Highlands.
Tasmanian Resources Minister Bryan Green’s spokesman said it was inappropriate to comment while the matter was before the court.
Someone is saying on another message board that Villarreal has resigned. Does anyone know anything about this? It would be no big surprise if he has gone.
That's fantastic news the GSLM people in Hobart say funding for drilling is on the way. It's a tremendous relief to know our investment is not only safe but we will soon be rewarded with billions of dollars worth of oil. I can see you are going to be a very valuable member of this board so please stick around, keep cultivating your contacts in GSLM and if you are able to get in touch with Empire itself. Maybe you will be able to find out from them some some really valuable info (they seem to pass on good info to a select few) and inform the rest of us here who are in the dark. We look forward to many interesting disclosures from you in the future.
If they had funds for drilling they would be shouting it at the top of their voices. They obviously don't, it's only logical.
From the article in Tuesday's The Examiner (Launceston):
"In May 2010, the state government restricted Great South Land Minerals' activities to an area less than half of the 7513 square kilometres that it had applied for rights to explore.
Director of Empire Energy, which owns Great South Land Minerals, Bill Keating said that decision had wiped $3.3 billion from its balance sheet and up to $20 billion in expected future profits.
It's a multibillion-dollar asset that's been taken from us.""
Apparently Director Keating has no understanding at all of what a balance sheet is about, and what an asset really is as well. What extraordinary, appalling ignorance from a Director of the company! Good grief, this genius votes on the board of directors to accept financial statements and reports!
In any case the wishful $3.3 billion "asset" valuation referred to 12 seismic targets (mostly poorly defined) while the retained Bellevue and Thunderbolt structures represent $2.2 billion of that wishful "asset" valuation (PR of 17 May 2010 which described the granting of EL 14/2009 as "excellent news for Empire").
On another aspect that is presently of message board interest: in the TV news story on Monday evening it was said that funds were NOT presently available to drill with so that the article in The Australian may be in error. There is obviously some screwy inconsistecy in what Keating is reported by it to have said in any case.
With Empire in virtual hibernation and nobody getting paid (just ask the Hobart office) running costs are minimal.
REAL money, REAL rig, is what its going to take for this HIGHLY speculative venture to succeed, not foo-foo press releases...
Glad to be able to enlighten.
Small daily variations in the pps are meaningless. It's sad there isn't anything of substance to talk about. Where's the beef? Only 3 months left to 17th May and this doesn't look like it's going to end well.
You'd think that between eight directors and all the experts in the Hobart office someone might have found the time to photo-shop an oil basin in. It's not as though it's too supersecret or anything.
But don't forget Malcolm is not demanding the whole $200 million be handed over up front. He is being ultra-reasonable about it and is willing to accept only $25 million initially. You can't be fairer than that.
It certainly takes time to obtain a loan of $25 million when you have no genuine collateral to put up against it. It takes forever in fact.
Your comment on the usability of the Bellevue precollar hole is rather wild. It might apply to uncased holes in soft sedimentary strata but probably not to the very hard dolerite rock type at Bellevue. Empire has more than enough real problems confronting it.
The cost of ocean going rigs is of no consolation to Empire. It's not as though it has even been able to get an offshore EL granted. The present pending application is something like the 3rd or 4th attempt for the same piece of sea that has been made. MRT files them all in the waste paper bin.
There is absolutely no chance of producing oil/gas and receiving revenue for it in 2011. The Empire table is quite bizarre.
It's an open discussion board and it's not relevant whether contributors do or do not own shares. It's the message not the messenger.
And yes, it is of interest why some holders might be selling. The dive in the stock price on increased volume could well have significance.
You should include BobSinCA too. He is well on top of it (even though his dry irony would go unrecognised by the cruder sort).
With it now being revealed the extraordinary letter of credit for $50 million was from an unlisted company controlled by one person it is rather a case of the plot unravels.
It is unclear why Mr Bendall should think MRT acted unfairly and unreasonably in granting EL14/2009 for a only smaller area than the expired SEL13/98 (He apparently does not have an objection to the short 2 years term.)
No drill testing of target structures was carried as was required under the work conditions imposed on SEL13/98 and Bendall's "belief" expressed in PRs that all conditions of the SEL were met is clearly not in accord with the fact that no drill testing was undertaken.
For an exploration licence to be granted evidence has to be provided that the applicant is likely to have access to sufficient financial resources to carry out the proposed work program. It would appear that MRT did not find the submitted evidence to be entirely convincing.
That supporting evidence was provided in the WHK letter to the Director of Mines dated 30 September 2009 which was the date of the final expiration of SEL13/98 and it would have accompanied the application for a replacement EL. In a section of the letter headed 'Ability to Raise Funds' was stated that the source of funds would be the Shareholder Rights Offer and that Mr Bendall had received written notice of approval for an amount of $50 million from Abbey International Holdings Limited to be applied to providing finance to Empire Energy. If MRT had doubts about the firmness of that purported funding and chose to grant only a smaller and short term licence than applied for then subsequent developments have completely vindicated its reservations.
It’s hard to see what Bendall thinks he can achieve with his "legal requests" to the Mining Tribunal.
The Tribunal may well ask why over eight months have elapsed since the granting of the licence before these matters have been raised with it.
The EL has been granted for two years (not one) although it is an imposed condition that Bellevue #1 be drilled in the first year. That obviously can't happen now and we can expect a good deal more bluster from Empire down the track excusing its failure to perform as required. Delay caused by the "litigation" will no doubt be given prominence.
A good many hopefuls were very sure there WOULD be a replacement exploration licence granted.
The position was unclear at the time with GSLM having exceeded the required exploration expenditure but underperformed on the prescribed work commitment.
The WHK letter to the Director of Mines in the Due Diligence Report discloses that Bendall's $50 million letter of credit was from a company named Abbey International Holdings Limited.
Googling shows it to be incorporated in Belize and to have an office address in London.
SEC Info states:
Abbey International Holdings Ltd has been a Filer, but our software has not found any of these "Issuer" topics:
— The Company
— Business
— Competition
— Risk Factors
— Management
— Stockholders
No Names (Directors, Officers, Attorneys, Accountants, Bankers, Agents, et al.)
Last filing was 16 November 2005 regarding a share purchase agreement with an Innofone Com Inc incorporated in Nevada and domiciled in Santa Monica CA
All in all it's not very surprising the $50 million failed to materialise.
The great importance that Bendall has placed on the the general accountancy firm WHK's "asset valuation" of $3.3 billion is amusing in view of their merely contacting and obtaining from RPS its own "off the top of the head" indicative value figure of $5 a barrel and then multplying it by the RPS 668 mmbb prospective resource to obtain the (voila!) $3.3 billion.
BobSinCA
Some more comments:
Agree with you it is quite astonishing that it was not known the intermediary (Sure Capital or whoever it was) was not able to do business in the USA. It doesn't sound like Saudi ARAMCO were too bothered about continuing on (if they ever were).
Agree with you that an $8 million new rig purchase for just two prospects and possibly just two drill holes is unjustified. The logistics involved would be horrendous. Very strange indeed.
Agreed that Mr Bendall's flare gas technology transaction is incomprehensibly complex and it has every appearance of having been a ruse to take up rights in lieu of his failure to buy them for cash as he undertook to.
I'm not at all clear what the EMV (expected monetary value) (note: not "mean") figure for Bellevue and Thunderbolt is meant to pertain to. Since the figure is in the ballpark of past exploration expenditure I can only guess it is intended to be a valuation of the two prospects as represented to a hypothetical prospective buyer i.e. the present market worth of the project. Is that your understanding as well?
Mr Haftel has been vociferous about a number of matters and I don't remember what he claimed as a large valuation made in the updated RPS report. I do recall him being quite excited about the huge number of expensive production wells estimated by RPS to be required if commercial fields were to be developed.
The Virginia Energy Consultants letter of assessment (it cannot be called a report) is so superficial as to be essentially meaningless and it can be dismissed from any serious consideration. RPS considered both the play COS and individual prospect COS, which VEC did not do, in addition to other detailed aspects.
I am also puzzled as to what the ill-fated Zeehan Zinc might have to do with Empire's present petroleum exploration activities. Also why Mr Bendall's experience as a field assistant in 1980 should be considered at all important.
I was intrigued as to how the major Australian accounting firm WHK arrived at the much-touted "asset" valuation of $3.3 billion. It now transpires it was made in a letter to the Director of Mines (Appendix Q in Hunter Wise Due Diligence). The $5 a barrel indicative valuation figure was obtained from RPS itself (a Mr Guise) and applied to the RPS prospective resources so that the simple multiplication calculation to derive the $3.3 billion figure (there was also a "low" figure of $0.5 billion that has unsurprisingly not been stated in any PR) was the sum total of WHK's original contribution. The references to "assets" by WHK ("Value of Assets" as the title of one section of their letter, and "the assets of Great South Land Mining [sic]" in the Conclusion would appear to be a very loose use of the term for a major accountancy firm.
MRT is entirely within its rights and the law to release to any public enquirer (i.e. place on open file) all of GSLM's data that lies outside the boundaries of EL 14/2009. If MRT is making available Empire/GSLM info that refers to the EL proper then Mr Bendall is hardly in a position to complain as he himself has made that publicly available (no additional technical info has been obtained since then). It looks rather like Bendall is trying to make some sort of flimsy point that he considers the formerly held ground outside EL14/2009 to be unresolved/still in dispute which is clearly not MRT's understanding.
The claim that Empire/GSLM receive compensation from "the State of Tasmania" for not re-granting all of the former SEL13/1998 as EL14/2009 is simply ludicrous.
You are talking trading strategy rather than the fundamentals. For the investors here who have been in it for some time a short term move from say 1.5 to 3 cents would be pretty meaningless. But good luck waiting for that "material" PR to act on. If it doesn't announce hard cash or a good JV has been obtained it won't amount to very much.
Well then, that 9 cents was reached very briefly after a PR stating that a Back to Site Agreement had been signed with Hunt Energy. Seeing that Hunt left the State and ended up by suing I wouldn't call that PR very "material".
What was the "material" PR in 2010? The only I can recall that was in any way factual was the SEC had approved the rights offering.
Higher turnover is perhaps a bit more interesting whatever it might be due to (and who knows what false rumors might be deliberately set running by eager sellers) but come on ... up $0.001 on the day is nothing to get excited about for a company that according to Bendall has a net asset valuation of billions of dollars, is talking of raising $200 million of new capital, and whose pps should be $10 or more (some dream merchants say more than $100).
Just in case anyone thinks I am being too "glass half empty" I ought to add it should happen any day now and all it takes is patience. The quieter management is being and the less we know about what is going on behind the scenes the better it must all be.
The time has come to find funding first if it is not too late already. No funding first = no drilling.
It's the message not the messenger. The "who" is no more than a bunch of pixels on your screen.
In view of the absence of any funding I would agree with you there is no visible interest in the exploration licence by other entities. It's a very big ask looking for $200 million (or even $20 million for that matter) to drill on a licence that may well be cancelled in 4 months time (there is very little chance now that drilling can be carried out by 17th May).
The only way that a new licence would ever be granted to Empire/GSLM would be if appreciable banked funds were to hand - no letters of credits or airy promises would suffice in view of the past unfulfilled expenditure/work requirements. The company has now made it very hard for itself with MRT because of its long history of non-compliance.
MRT would not be awarding a new licence because of a perceived lack of interest by other explorers. There is no way they would want to see a repeat of no-performance squatting by GSLM when another company could turn up that has the required exploration funding.
Mr Villareal Jr can't have found the $200 million yet. It must be due to appear any day now, all it needs is more patience.
Has anyone got any 2011 predictions to make? They would make interesting reading.
Why not wait until they go below 1 cent and that way you will get a whole lot more stock for your money. You could improve your risk/reward ratio substantially by doing that.
A clear and honest PR would not necessarily ensure the stockholders would have a good Christmas. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise".
Don't worry, there is very little chance of good news leaking out.
I'm sorry to say I have to disagree with you. I think the probability of obtaining funding to drill is less than 2% i.e. about the probability of testable oil being encountered even if Bellevue were drilled.
No it wasn't. No it isn't. They aren't and they are? It already has.
It's ridiculous for them to be talking $200 million when $20 million would suffice and be somewhat more realistic. There ain't no Santa Claus.