RGBP - <<Yes there has been a Buyout....One that I cannot forget>>!!!....
*** NEVER DISREGARD THE IMPONDERABLE***!.....
WE do not know what might happen going forward???.....
From one day to the Next day the stock went up so much that thinking it would go down I did not buy back right away....
Instead of going down... Hurricane Hydrocarbon kept going UP and UP....
Please Read the Nice Story.... FWIW
A STORY THAT MAKES ONE WONDER ABOUT THE IMPONDERABLE.....
From Bankruptcy to Oil Riches
By Ian Austen
Published: Wednesday, August 24, 2005
NEW YORK — Six years ago, when Bernard Isautier took the helm of Hurricane Hydrocarbons, things looked bleak.
The company, based in Calgary, Alberta, was under bankruptcy protection. It controlled vast, recently privatized oil reserves in the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan but had been drained by a dispute with a local refinery, a currency collapse and prices depressed by a flood of Russian oil into the country, a former Soviet republic.
Arriving at an opportune moment, Isautier bought the refinery involved in the dispute, paying in stock. Unfavorable deals with the Kazakh government were resolved. He recapitalized the company with money from European investors. And the price of oil went up.
Hurricane Hydrocarbons emerged from bankruptcy in 2000, and in 2003 Isautier changed its name to PetroKazakhstan.
On Monday, he announced a plan to sell the company to China National Petroleum Corp., or CNPC, for $4.18 billion, or $55 a share, a long way from the 27 cents that Hurricane traded at when it was in bankryptcy…..
Isautier, 62, who owns 3.1 percent of PetroKazakhstan, has had a career that does not fit the mold of an oil company chief in Alberta. Though the company is officially based in Calgary, Isautier runs it from London and has moved its top executives there. With all its assets in Kazakhstan, the oil producer now has few ties to its official base.
Isautier, who was born in France, studied physics, mathematics and engineering at two universities that produce many of that country's top public servants and executives.
After eight years with the French Ministry of Industry, Isautier moved to Elf Aquitaine, an oil and natural gas producer owned at the time by the French government. In the mid-1970s, he was sent overseas to run Elf's Canadian subsidiary.
Isautier, who declined on Monday to be interviewed about his professional history, quickly took to the Canadian energy industry, which was rapidly expanding.
From 1981 to 1988, he worked for Polysar Energy & Chemicals, rising to chief executive of its Canterra Energy unit.
From 1990 to 1992, he was president and chief executive of Thomson Consumer Electronics in Paris.
Isautier first encountered Kazakhstan after he became president and chief executive of Canadian Occidental Petroleum, now known as Nexen, 12 years ago. That company had considered becoming a partner on a Kazakh project. After rejecting the idea as too risky, it operated a field there for Hurricane Hydrocarbons.
Isautier joined Hurricane in 1999 as chief executive. While its operations were widely viewed by Canadian investors as something of a black hole, PetroKazakhstan's treasurer, Jeffrey Auld, said Isautier had seen the company's potential.
"It was a spectacular set of oil fields that was the attraction for him," Auld said Monday from London.
Isautier thought that political changes in Kazakhstan would bring order to the business climate there, Auld said.
But the company is still embroiled in disputes with the Kazakh government. To help ease those problems, PetroKazakhstan hired a former Canadian prime minister, Jean Chrétien, as a special adviser last year, with limited effect.
What Isautier's next move will be is unclear.Under the purchase agreement, the Chinese company agreed to consider paying cash and stock in a new, as yet unnamed oil and natural gas exploration company that Isautier would run in Central Asia, just not in Kazakhstan.
Rival is 'looking at options'
Oil & Natural Gas, the Indian company that was outbid for PetroKazakhstan, is "looking at options," Bloomberg News quoted its chairman, Subir Raha, as saying Tuesday. PetroKazakhstan would have to pay a $125 million breakup fee if it canceled its deal with CNPC.
janet
