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Awl Bidness



The sorry tale of Brasil's Petrobras has served to reinforce every single stereotype that ever existed about Latin America and government meddling in the operation of corporations.


Those include (but are not limited to):
corruption, bribery, mismanagement, bungling and incompetence.
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Suncor to Canadian Oil Sands Holders: Hope `Not a Strategy'


by Jeremy Van Loon
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...an-oil-sands-shareholders-should-accept-offer
November 12, 2015

(Bloomberg) Suncor Energy Inc. wants shareholders of Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. to weigh its C$4.7 billion ($3.5 billion) takeover offer closely and reject a strategy that relies on the “hope” of better performance.

Suncor appealed directly to Canadian Oil Sands shareholders in a letter Thursday after two offers earlier this year were rejected and last month’s hostile bid was met with a poison-pill defense put up by its management and board. Suncor says it will devote more resources to fixing an oil-sands mining project co-owned by seven companies after it boosts its stake to 49 percent from 12 percent by taking over Canadian Oil Sands, the largest shareholder.

The battle over Canadian Oil Sands and its ownership of the bitumen mining operator Syncrude comes as the industry struggles with low oil prices that make most expansions too costly, and even some existing production unprofitable. Canadian Oil Sands says Suncor is paying brokers to push the deal and that higher prices will allow its shareholders to benefit more than they would owning Suncor stock.

“Hope isn’t a strategy,” Suncor said in the letter. “If you take your board’s advice and ‘do nothing,’ you risk that Canadian Oil Sands’ board and management will carry on as they do today, getting paid a significant amount of money to provide quarterly updates on what has been consistently disappointing performance of the company’s single asset, over which it has little control.”

Suncor, Canada’s largest oil producer, is paying brokers 5 cents a share to help convince holders to back the takeover, Canadian Oil Sands said on its website.

Undervalued Bid

“Fearmongering will not breathe life into a dead offer,” Canadian Oil Sands Chief Executive Officer Ryan Kubik said Thursday in a statement after the market closed. Suncor is “trashing Syncrude and COS at every turn yet desperately trying to scare and mislead shareholders in an urgent sale.”

Broker fees are the norm in Canadian takeover bids, according to Suncor spokeswoman Sneh Seetal.

“The purpose is to compensate brokers for reaching retail shareholders so that they may have an opportunity to consider receiving the value of the offer,” Seetal said in an e-mail.

Suncor fell 2.4 percent to C$37.29 at the close in Toronto. Canadian Oil Sands declined 2.1 percent to C$9.34.

The offer is “full and fair” and provides a 57 percent premium over the pre-bid price for a stake in a “financially stronger, more diverse and more stable company,” Suncor said. Canadian Oil Sands has a record of “underperformance, financial challenges,” and vulnerability to low oil prices, Suncor added.

Winning Bidder

“Suncor is likely going to be the winning bidder because there are no other logical buyers,” said Nima Billou, an analyst at Veritas Investment Research in Toronto, who recommends Canadian Oil Sands shareholders tender their stock. Canadian Oil Sands management is opposing the deal because they “don’t want to be seen accepting a lower offer” after higher bids earlier this year, Billou said.

Suncor has asked Alberta regulators to strike down the target’s new shareholder rights plan aimed at preventing its takeover. The Alberta Securities Commission will hold a hearing on Nov. 26 to consider the so-called poison pill adopted by the Canadian Oil Sands board last month. The hearing follows Suncor’s application for an order to cease the new rights plan.​



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...an-oil-sands-shareholders-should-accept-offer

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Lukoil Pretax Profit Beats Estimates Even as Net Tumbles
by Stephen Bierman
November 30, 2015

Free cash flow reached $2 billion in first nine months of year
Company in `excellent' position to keep dividend, analyst says


(Bloomberg) Lukoil PJSC reported pretax earnings that beat analyst estimates, helping buoy the shares even as net income slumped.

Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization totaled $3.65 billion in the third quarter, exceeding the $3.24 billion average estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. The Moscow-based company reported free cash flow of $2 billion for the first nine months of the year.

Lukoil, Russia’s largest oil producer after Rosneft OJSC, beat Ebitda expectations even as oil prices tumbled and exploration wells off Romania failed. Cash flow has been boosted by the ruble’s devaluation, Vice President Leonid Fedun said Monday on a conference call. The currency averaged 62.98 to the dollar in the third quarter compared with 36.19 a year earlier, the company said.

The shares rose as much as 1.3 percent in Moscow, and were up 0.9 percent at 2,561.2 rubles as of 4:51 p.m. local time. The stock has gained 15 percent this year.

“The company is in an excellent position to at least sustain 2015 dividends,” Alexander Nazarov, an oil and gas analyst at Gazprombank, said by e-mail. Lukoil generated $1.5 billion of free cash flow in the three months through September, the biggest volume in at least nine quarters, he said.

The company’s cash flow shows it has sufficient funds for dividends, Fedun said. The payout on 2015 earnings may increase from a year earlier in ruble terms, he said.

Exploration Write-Offs

Net income fell to $623 million in the quarter from $1.62 billion a year earlier, reflecting slumping oil prices and the unsuccessful exploration in the Black Sea. That missed the $826 million average estimate of nine analysts. Sales dropped 40 percent to $23.4 billion.

“Net income was significantly affected by a twofold decrease in hydrocarbon prices and by dry-hole write-offs,” Lukoil said in a statement. The company wrote off $371 million in exploration costs from Romania through the first nine months of the year, with $127 million of that in the third quarter. It plans talks with Exxon Mobil Corp. about joint development of Romanian offshore blocks, Fedun said.

Oil Slump

World crude prices have collapsed over the past year after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to maintain output targets to defend its market share, exacerbating a global supply glut. Russia’s Bashneft PJSC, Gazprom Neft PJSC and OAO Novatek have also reported lower third-quarter profit or a loss for the period.

Lukoil reported a 1.1 percent increase in oil and gas production to 2.37 million barrels a day in the quarter. Oil and liquids output climbed 1.5 percent to an average 2.07 million barrels a day as growth in Iraq helped counter declining volumes from the West Siberia division, Lukoil’s largest Russian production unit.

Revenue from Iraq’s West Qurna-2 project was $2.42 billion for the first nine months of the year. Earnings from the country as a whole held steady from the previous quarter, showing that volumes can be increased to offset declining oil prices, Alexei Kokin, an analyst at Uralsib Financial Corp., said by e-mail.

Lukoil sees oil prices at $50 a barrel next year, Fedun said. That compares with Brent crude at about $45 currently.



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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...s-of-oil-vanish-in-a-puff-of-accounting-smoke




Billions of Barrels of Oil Vanish in a Puff of Accounting Smoke
by Asjylyn Loder
Bloomberg
December 9, 2015



Across the American shale patch, companies are being forced to square their reported oil reserves with hard economic reality. After lobbying for rules that let them claim their vast underground potential at the start of the boom, they must now acknowledge what their investors already know: many prospective wells would lose money with oil hovering below $40 a barrel.

Companies such as Chesapeake, founded by fracking pioneer Aubrey McClendon, pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission for an accounting change in 2009 that made it easier to claim reserves from wells that wouldn’t be drilled for years. Inventories almost doubled and investors poured money into the shale boom, enticed by near-bottomless prospects.

But the rule has a catch. It requires that the undrilled wells be profitable at a price determined by an SEC formula, and they must be drilled within five years.

Time is up, prices are down, and the rule is about to wipe out billions of barrels of shale drillers’ reserves. The reckoning is coming in the next few months, when the companies report 2015 figures.

“There was too much optimism built into their forecasts,” said David Hughes, a fellow at the Post Carbon Institute and formerly a scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada. “It was a great game while it lasted.”

The rule change will cut Chesapeake’s inventory by 45 percent, regulatory filings show. Chesapeake’s additional discoveries and expansions will offset some of its revisions, the company said in a third-quarter regulatory filing. Gordon Pennoyer, a spokesman for Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake, declined to comment further.

Other examples include Denver-based Bill Barrett Corp., which will lose as much as 40 percent, and Oasis Petroleum Inc., based in Houston, which will erase 33 percent, according to filings. Larry Busnardo, a Bill Barrett spokesman, declined to comment. Richard Robuck of Oasis didn’t respond to questions.

The U.S. shale revolution, which brought the country closer to energy self-sufficiency than at any time since the 1980s, was built on money borrowed against the promises of future output. New wells that could be drilled when U.S. oil was selling for $95 a barrel -- last year’s price as calculated by the SEC’s formula -- simply don’t pay at today’s prices, and the revolution has stalled.

Undrilled Properties

When fracking advocates lobbied the SEC, they argued that hydraulic fracturing was a new technology that unlocked oil and gas in vast layers of underground rock, making drilling more predictable that it used to be.

Drillers met the rule’s profitability provision last year due to a quirk in the SEC’s pricing formula. The agency’s yardstick is an average of the prices on the first day of each month during the calendar year. The price came to $95 a barrel at the end of 2014, even though oil was trading below $50 by the time the companies reported reserves in February and March. The 2015 average, including the Dec. 1 price, comes out to $51 a barrel.

“They got such a break with the price for last year, but it sure as hell isn’t going to happen this year,” said Ed Hirs, a managing director at Houston-based Hillhouse Resources, an independent energy company.

Proven Reserves

The wells that exist only on paper are particularly vulnerable to revision. And thanks to the SEC rule change, companies have a lot more undeveloped reserves on their books than they used to.

Undeveloped reserves of oil and natural gas liquids have more than tripled to 6.1 billion barrels since 2008, the last year before the rule went into effect, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on 40 independent U.S. producers. Undrilled wells account for 45 percent of proven reserves, up from 30 percent in 2008.

Writedowns, which are reported on a quarterly basis, point to sizable revisions. The 61 companies in the Bloomberg North American Independent Explorers and Producers index have announced impairments of $143.8 billion in the past year.

Some of the wells may never be drilled, while others may return to inventories if prices rise. A company’s deletions may be offset by the addition of new prospects, purchased properties or an increase in the estimated amount of crude each well will produce.

“The question is, how are these reserves going to come back?” said Subash Chandra, an energy analyst with Guggenheim Securities in New York. “Because if you have to spend within cash flow, those reserves aren’t coming back. Not unless we get a spike in prices, or we return to levered growth.”


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Well, ain't this some shit!
I'll be hornswoggled.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...el-price-adjustments-to-curb-demand-pollution


China Suspends Fuel Price Cuts to Curb Oil Demand, Pollution

by Bloomberg News
December 15, 2015

Sinopec shares jump most in seven years, PetroChina rises


China suspended fuel price adjustments as the world’s biggest energy consumer tries to curb demand growth and cut pollution to help improve air quality. Shares of the country’s biggest energy producers surged.

Keeping domestic fuel rates stable, while oil price continue to fall, can help curb petroleum consumption from “increasing too fast," National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s top economic planner, said in a statement dated Dec. 15. Automobile emissions are part of the reason for worsening air pollution, the NDRC said. Gasoline and diesel prices should have been cut by 200 yuan ($31) a metric ton on Tuesday based on its previous mechanism, according to ICIS China, a commodity researcher.

“It seems that the government won’t cut prices until the pollution situation gets improved,” said Wei Wei, an analyst at Huaxi Securities Co. in Shanghai. “Otherwise more people will buy and consume cheaper fuel to add to pollution.”

Beijing issued its most severe smog warning last week for the first time, a so-called red pollution alert, limiting industrial production, banning outdoor construction and halting classes at primary schools and kindergartens. Shanghai, the financial capital, also had its worst smog in two years this week.

“With acute pollution across major cities in China, partly attributable to vehicle exhaust, the objective is to slow consumption growth,” Neil Beveridge, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., wrote in a research report Wednesday. “If crude prices continue to decline then refiners will continue to benefit through margin expansion as refined product prices are kept constant.”

Share price surge

China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., Asia’s biggest refiner, rose as much as 11 percent to HK$4.83, the biggest intraday gain since October 2008. PetroChina Co., the country’s second-largest refiner, gained as much as 6.9 percent to HK$5.40, the biggest advance in more than two months. Both companies earlier this week had fallen to their lowest levels in at least six years.

The suspension of oil product price adjustments may temporarily widen refining margins by $2 to $3 a barrel, and they may improve further if crude prices continue to fall, Beijing-based China International Capital Corp. said in an e-mailed report. Brent crude, a benchmark for most of the world’s oil, has fallen about 14 percent this month.

China changed its system for setting gasoline and diesel prices in March 2013 to more closely track refiners’ crude costs. Fuel prices have been reviewed every 10 working days based on the average price of a basket of crudes, down from 22 days previously. The government will revise the current oil pricing mechanism and will seek public comment on the changes, the NDRC said in its statement.

The nation’s gasoline demand exceeded expectations in the first 10 months of the year by increasing 10.4 percent from a year earlier, compared with weak diesel and fuel oil consumption, underscoring the country’s shift away from heavy manufacturing, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Reported on Dec. 11.

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PRESS-RELEASE
16.12.2015

EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL SHAREHOLDERS MEETING OF PJSC “LUKOIL” APPROVES INTERIM DIVIDEND PAYMENTS




The outcomes of the Extraordinary General Shareholders Meeting of PJSC "LUKOIL" (the 'EGM') that took place in the form of absentee voting on 14 December 2015 have been summarized today.

The shareholders resolved to pay interim dividends on ordinary shares of PJSC “LUKOIL” in the amount of 65 roubles per ordinary share.

The EGM set 24 December 2015 as the date on which persons entitled to receive dividends will be determined.

The dividends will be paid using monetary funds from the account of PJSC “LUKOIL” to nominee shareholders and trust managers who are professional market participants not later than 14 January 2016, to other persons registered in the shareholder register of PJSC “LUKOIL” not later than 4 February 2016.

The costs on the transfer of dividends, regardless of the means, will be paid by PJSC “LUKOIL”.

The EGM also approved Amendments and addenda to the Charter of Public Joint Stock Company “Oil company “LUKOIL”.


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"Jim Bob" Moffett was, hands down, the biggest swindler it has ever been my misfortune to encounter. If ever there was a prime example of the unholy alliance between destroyers of capital and Wall Street investment bankers, Jim Bob was it.


The Wall Street investment bankers dearly loved him. Every few years, he'd come up with some wild but highly saleable idea and the completely corrupt Wall Street "banksters" would rush to assist him. The serial failures were an annuity for the investment bankers and the complicit "analysts" who perennially endorsed the company and its crackpot schemes.


There were very few years when his company wasn't engaged in some scheme that required the services of investment bankers. There were multiple acquisitions, spin-offs, reorganizations, divestitures, formations of limited partnerships and fairness opinions.


Jim Bob may have been the biggest "glad hander and back slapper" I ever saw in action. He was the consummate salesman: charismatic, glib, smooth and exuding confidence. He was a showman who dearly loved working a roomful of gullible fools.


This is a guy who made a lot of investment bankers rich. The shareholders? Are you kidding? They were the suckers.


I don't want to think about the amount of bribery that he and the company were involved in when developing the Grasberg deposit in Indonesia. Backhanders were required and the "greasing of palms" must have been on a truly colossal and immense scale.


I first ran into him at a Carl Pforzheimer Oil and Gas Investor Conference sometime around 1985. I watched with astonishment as Jim Bob somehow succeeded in repeatedly destroying immense amounts of capital over the next three decades. It was (and remains) beyond my comprehension that there could possibly be that many suckers with that much money.


It remains beyond my comprehension that somebody could get away with this kind of crap for five decades.



Because of the various corporate machinations and contortions (including the limited time frame), this chart badly understates the company's horrendous results. By any measure, the results for the company's unfortunate shareholders have been horrible.

http://chart.finance.yahoo.com/z?s=FCX&t=my&q=l&l=off&z=l&a=v&p=s&lang=en-US&region=US








One Of The World's Biggest Swindlers and Blowhards Retires

PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Freeport-McMoRan Inc. (NYSE:FCX) announced today that "Jim Bob" (James R.) Moffett, Chairman of the Board, co-founder, and long-time executive, will step down from FCX’s Board of Directors and as Executive Chairman. Mr. Moffett, who has been named Chairman Emeritus, has agreed to become a consultant to the FCX Board, including providing advisory services in support of the company’s ongoing discussions with the Indonesian Government regarding its Contract of Work.

The Board has elected Gerald J. Ford as Non-Executive Chairman. Mr. Ford has served as FCX’s Lead Independent Director since 2013.

Richard C. Adkerson, Vice Chairman, continues as President and Chief Executive Officer.

“During his over 50-year career in the natural resource industry, Jim Bob has become an icon as an explorationist,” said Gerald J. Ford. “Freeport-McMoRan has been built from his exceptional leadership, strong work ethic and vast knowledge of both the industry and our company’s operations.”

Richard C. Adkerson, stated: “It has been an honor and a privilege to have benefited from Jim Bob’s broad experience, commitment and support throughout the years.”

- Salute to Jim Bob, Chief Geologist

“Jim Bob has been our chief geologist and has demonstrated great passion for exploration throughout his career,” said Mr. Adkerson. “He was instrumental in the discovery and development of our Grasberg deposit in Indonesia, which has grown to become one of the world’s largest copper and gold deposits.”

Mr. Moffett has served as Executive Chairman of FCX since 2003 and previously served as FCX’s Chief Executive Officer from 1995 to 2003. In 1969, Mr. Moffett and two associates founded McMoRan Oil & Gas Co., which developed into one of America's leading independent oil and gas companies. In 1981, Mr. Moffett led the effort to merge McMoRan Oil & Gas Co. and Freeport Minerals Company. The merger resulted in the establishment of FCX’s former parent company, which became a global natural resource company. He served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer from 1984 until its acquisition in 1997.

Mr. Moffett has also been a noted civic leader and has received many awards during his career, including the 1990 Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans Award. In 2000, he received the Association's Norman Vincent Peale Award for his exceptional humanitarian contributions to society. He is also a member of the University of Texas McCombs School of Business Hall of Fame and the American Mining Hall of Fame, Mining Foundation of the Southwest.

FCX is a premier U.S.-based natural resources company with an industry-leading global portfolio of mineral assets, significant oil and gas resources and a growing production profile. FCX is the world's largest publicly traded copper producer.

FCX's portfolio of assets includes the Grasberg minerals district in Indonesia, one of the world's largest copper and gold deposits; significant mining operations in the Americas, including the large-scale Morenci minerals district in North America and the Cerro Verde operation in South America; the Tenke Fungurume minerals district in the DRC; and significant U.S. oil and natural gas assets in the Deepwater GOM, onshore and offshore California and in the Haynesville natural gas shale, and a position in the Inboard Lower Tertiary/Cretaceous natural gas trend onshore in South Louisiana.




Freeport-McMoRan Chairman "Jim Bob" (James) Moffett to step down
(Reuters)
* Moffett to quit Freeport's board
* Gerald Ford appointed non-executive chairman


Dec 28 (Reuters) - Freeport-McMoRan Inc co-founder "Jim Bob" (James) Moffett will step down as chairman and quit its board, months after the miner added two new directors under pressure from billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

Freeport said Moffett, who had been appointed chairman emeritus, would be a consultant to its board and advise the company on its Indonesia operations, including Grasberg.

Moffett was instrumental in the discovery and development of Grasberg, one of the world's biggest gold and copper deposits.

Moffett stepping down probably has more to do with a health problem rather than pressure from Icahn, Bradford Research analyst Charles Bradford told Reuters.

Icahn, who owned 8.8 percent stake in Freeport as of Sept. 22, has criticized the miner's spending, capital structure and executive compensation at a time when the company is struggling with weak commodity prices.

Icahn and Freeport reached an agreement in October, putting "restrictions" on the activist investor seeking the removal of any board members.

The company said then that it would shrink the size of its board from 16 to nine members, and separate its oil and gas business from its mining operations.

Freeport also said on Monday that it appointed Gerald Ford non-executive chairman, effective Dec. 31. Ford has been the company's lead independent director since 2013.

Freeport entered the oil and gas business in 2013 with the acquisitions of Plains Exploration and McMoRan Exploration for $9 billion. The move raised eyebrows because Moffett was also McMoRan's largest individual shareholder and its chief executive.

In his new role, Moffett will receive an annual consulting fee of $1.5 million, Freeport said in a regulatory filing.

Moffett's departure comes a couple of months after Freeport scrapped its unusual "Office of the Chairman" structure.

The "office", which comprised Moffett, Chief Executive Richard Adkerson and the company's oil and gas business President James Flores, was seen as drowning out the voice of the lead independent director.





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The man is a clown and a buffoon who picked the pockets of the terminally credulous—
enabled, encouraged, aided and abetted by totally corrupt investment bankers.




I've been watching that particular chicanery for three decades.



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Right.
Bit of a sticky wicket here.
​


Code: 
ROYAL DUTCH SHELL PLC ADR CLASS A  (RDS.A) 
Statement of  CASH FLOW							
Fiscal year ends in December. 
USD in millions except per share data.	
                                                                       2014-09	2014-12	2015-03	2015-06	2015-09		Trailing 4 Quarters

Net cash provided by operating activities	                         12811	 9608	 7106	 6050	11231		 33,995

Investments in property, plant, and equipment	                         -7867	-8831	-6215	-6205	-6412		-27,663

Net cash used for investing activities	                                 -4327	-6680	-4440	-6063	-5718		-22,901

Cash dividends paid	                                                 -2998	-3026	-2950	-2321	-2389		-10,686
 
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