What has Blast got, and where are they headed?
I have never posted on this message board. I have not been involved in any penny stock since I was in my twenties (and lost my shirt on one!). So I will not be back here to post anything else in all likelihood.
But I am an old timer in the oil and gas business. I like to own or invest in real things that I can touch and have some affect on like oil fields. I sense from reading a few of these posts that very few people here have experience in the O&G industry.
Yesterday, I was having breakfast in Lafayette with several oilfield acquaintances, plus a couple of guys I didn't know. One of the hands knew something about Blast - did not have much good to say about them at all.
When I heard his bad story I recalled that I knew about Blast Energy or even when it was called Verdys. I had not heard anything about them or tried to keep up with them since they went chapter 11 a couple of years ago. I thought they probably no longer existed. Today I threw away a couple of hours reading about them and finding out that they are still around - sort of.
The reason that I had heard of Blast previously was because I was interested in their system at one point in time. I knew a guy who had seen their rig sometime before the bankruptcy. At taht time it sounded intresting. Before that, like five or six years ago, the first Blast system was junk. All hype for nothing. And there was a fellow in control that was considered real sketchy named Eric McAfee or McCaffey. But at the point they had reached in 2005 or 2006 I thought there might be some coalbed methane application or even conventional that could be useful. Then Blast Energy went belly up.
I have worked in CBM and conventional oil and gas for many, many years and that is my world so to speak.
So I looked on the Blast Energy Services web page today. It looks like they are back to peddling junk, but they are hyping it again like it is something amazing no one has ever seen.
A coiled tubing unit that can go horizontally 90 foot in a large diameter open hole? So what is new? The industry does that every day with coiled tubing. What is different or unique about that? Coiled tubing horizontals have been done for years and being limited to open hole like Blast Energy is does not have much promise. Don't get me wrong, coiled tubing is a good business if you are out running a fleet of rigs in an oil boom. One rig in a some what down market does not make much sense.
Also, what is the hullabaloo about the satellite stuff? There are all kinds of companies, big and small, in the real-time remote communication, sensing, drilling, etc. market. This one is hyped like it is something incredible, but it is being done every day by probably 15 or 20 bigger firms like Baker Hughes, GE, etc. Again, I am not saying you can't make a meager living in this, but you are competing against some big time competitors with tons of capital and R&D.
Last question: I read the quarterley report. I don't know anything else about their $ position, but it looks terrible. They had $300K at the end of March. At anything close to their burn rate, they are out of cash this month or next. What will happen then? Will there be a liquidation of the company--and if yes, what will the distribution of assets look like (does the coiled tubing rig go to auction). Or is some kind of loan facility in place? Or if Eric McAfee is still the boss will he put in some kind of loan or stock purchase to keep them going for a while?
Thank you in advance for shedding any light on these issues. The Blast Energy company info and web page tells nothing useful.
John
AI
