TXO to fly on Dalby's upbeat analysis
27 Oct 2014 by Stewart Dalby
AIM-listed TXO, started out as an gas E & P some time ago and became an oil and gas investment company. It has a frontier exploration venture in Tasmania in which it has a 25 per cent interest but which is now non-core.
It also, through an investment has some small oil production in Kentucky in the US. It wanted to divest this holding, but believes it can increase production through Enhanced Oil Recovery methods, which it intends to commence shortly. It is continuing its career as a conventional oil and gas group through a 18.8 per cent stake in Athabasca Resources, which is looking for listing is looking to list and exploit heavy oil tar sands in Canada.
But management time these days is largely taken up advancing its core activity: its hydrocarbon recovery and remediation business in The Bahamas.
TXO has increased its investment in Grand Bahama Group (GBG) to 35.67 per cent. When TXO presented at our November 7 conference 2013 the holding was 30.17 per cent. GBG’s 100 per cent held subsidiary Morgan Oil Marine (MOM) was planning to build a hydrocarbon recycling plant (HRP) at Freeport, in the Bahamas, which would have been able to treat slops and oil waste at a rate of 3,000 gallons a minute.
As an interim measure TXO utilised the barge “Martha” which can hold one million gallons of used oil, and is capable of processing the cargo on board. The barge can deal with some of the hundreds of ships which call at Freeport each year. The barge is free to roam among passing shipping traffic to pick up cargoes. It is estimated some 4,800 vessels dock in Freeport and a further 134,000 travel annually in the shipping lanes around The Bahamas.
The original plan has changed, however, because TXO has been buying into complementary technologies for oil waste recycling. Post the 2013 year-end TXO took a 25.1 per cent equity interest in Oil Recovery Services (ORS) for £200,000 in cash. This group has proprietary technology for the reprocessing of contaminated oils and the remediation of dirty water. ORS technology removes the contamination from the oil rather than re-refining it, producing greater yields of usable oil, particularly fuel oil and is less harsh on the environment.
Apart from anything else ORS has ways of treating the waste oil which will obviate the need for a HRP facility, or at least such a large one as was being planned. This will result in a capital cost saving.
Using ORS technology MOM will be able to process at a rate of over 100,00O tonnes a year (27million gallons). But it has also discovered that there are man-made oil lakes all around the world and three of them are in The Bahamas. They are owned by a well-known major oil company and they offer a one off chance to validate the technology in a different field. The first contract has been successfully completed and another, to process 70,000 tonnes (14 million gallons), is hoped for.
Most recently TXO invested in a new joint venture company by buying a 30 per cent stake in Oil Technology Royalties (OTR). OTR has certain commercialisation rights to a patented acoustic flow reactor valve called “RAP” which improves the homogeneity, viscosity and API gravity of heavy crude oil and is used to create heavy fuel oil and diesel emulsions.
OTR was originally planned to be used by MOM, but recently TXO announced it was setting up a joint venture (JV) in Kuwait. The company has signed a non-binding letter of intent with Abdulaziz Abdulmohsin Al-Rashid Sons one of the largest commercial enterprises in Kuwait to in order to promote and commercialise OTR’s technology in Kuwait. But this is for the future.
TXO has been, in the recent past, bedevilled by feelings that the company is strapped for cash, that it is not generating revenue and its technologies are not well known. This has all impacted on the share price, which is bumping along just above the 52 week low of 0.14p at 0.17p.
But look at things in a different way. The company has arranged a convertible loan which allows it to keep the lights on. Leave out OTR altogether and the prize from The alone Bahamas could be great.
Accept that the company says it can process 124,000 tonnes of waste oil a year (26 million gallons). Accept also that MOM can make US$1 a gallon profit, then the cash flow to the company is a mouth-watering US$26 million a year.
This is some cash flow for a company which is supposedly strapped for cash. TXO’s share of 60 per cent of net distributable profits should filter back to the company. The market seems to be taking no notice of the acquisitions and progress made.
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