WTI $59.43 -26c, Brent $66.27 -54c, Diff $6.84 -4c, NG $3.01 -1c
Oil price
Oil prices drifted yesterday as the dollar rallied, international growth appears sluggish despite lower oil prices and the Saudi’s exported more in March, 7.898m barrels the highest since 2005. Retail gasoline trades up again, it is now $2.74 a gallon which is up another 5.3 cents on the week and now less than a buck lower than this time last year, remember it’s Memorial Day weekend upcoming and that signals the start of the driving season.
Finally if you read the FT you couldn't have failed to spot the front page spread on ‘Big Oil’s retrenchment’ as Major’s are cutting back capex. Thank god they told me I would never have noticed otherwise… Actually they are all cheering down in Riyadh as what you can draw from all this is that is has not been US shale oil that blinked first as Opec had hoped but the oil majors which bodes very well for oil prices a little further out.
Premier / Rockhopper / FOGL
The partners in the Isobel deep well in the North Falklands Basin have announced that they have penetrated a sand interval with suspected elevated formation pressure and oil shows. Accordingly they have set a cement plug over the interval, run the contingent casing string in the shale section above before drilling the proposed Isobel reservoir to TD. Whilst the partners are correctly not fanning any flames here it must be at least encouraging what they have seen so far…
It's Rockhopper’s AGM day which means that they get to talk about the Med a bit, so far what I have seen is quietly optimistic, more after I have seen the presentation after the meeting. It also means that Sam’s tie gets its annual outing…
Chariot Oil & Gas
Chariot announced this morning that the AziLat farm-out in Brazil has been called off. Apparently AziLat requested amendments that were ‘unacceptable’ and Chariot were in no mood to blink. Chariot will pay the seismic costs themselves but having structured the deal in a canny way will not effect their capex this year. I remain positive on Chariot who have few commitments and some cash in the bank and whilst a couple more farm-outs wouldn't go amiss they are under little pressure with plenty of upside when the time comes.
San Leon
Sometimes you have to get the markets to actually inhale the…
