Britan saved!!!!!!!!!!..............almost ;)

[Mega]

A little digging would have uncovered the facts about Sussex oil boom

Horse Hill might contain 100bn recoverable barrels of oil, but it equally might contain zero

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An exploratory well-head at Horse Hill, close to Gatwick Airport Photo: Reuters









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By James Quinn

4:15PM BST 16 Apr 2015
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David Lenigas is no stranger to headlines.


A current director of no less than 26 public companies, according to the latest data from Bloomberg, and more than 100 private companies historically, the Australian-born miner has helped to fill his fair share of column inches over his time in the public markets.


From Rare Earth Minerals to fastJet to Lonrho, the companies he has been involved in have rarely been dull. But his latest venture is something else.


A week ago, UK Oil & Gas Investments, of which Lenigas is chairman and owns a 4.4pc stake, announced that there could be as much as 100bn barrels of fossil fuels under a large stretch of Sussex and Surrey Weald. To put that into context, Iran - which has almost 10pc of the world’s oil - has 160bn barrels of reserves, while the North Sea has delivered just 45bn barrels over the past 40 years.


Testing by an American consultancy had found that between 3pc and 15pc of the oil might be extracted – up to 15bn barrels.


News of the apparent signficance of the so-called "Horse Hill" licence - which sits close to Gatwick Airport and in which UK Oil & Gas Investments has a 20.36pc interest – was unsurprisingly greeted with great gusto by investors and the media alike.

But for a company with a market capitalisation of less than £20m at the time, the news received an inordinant amount of media coverage.

^{David Lenigas}
From hundreds of newspaper column inches to reports throughout the day on BBC News, it appeared that what UK Oil & Gas Investments had stumbled upon was truly a great find.

So great that a bullish Lenigas took to the airwaves, telling Sky News the find was “definitive” and the oil was “easily discoverable”.

“You can suck the oil out of the sponge,” he told the news channel.

As a result, the shares shot up, rising some 300pc last Thursday alone, with hundreds of millions of shares having been traded between last Thursday morning and the close of trading Tuesday night.
So it must have been with some surprise for investors in the latest “must-have” Aim stock that on Wednesday morning, UK Oil & Gas Investments issued a brief statement clarifying its recent find.
The statement came down to one crux sentence: “The oil in place (OIP) hydrocarbon volumes estimated should not be considered as either contingent or prospective resources or reserves.”
In other words, although Horse Hill might contain 100bn recoverable barrels of oil, it equally might contain zero.

^{Horse Hill, near Gatwick}
To say this is embarrassing for Lenigas and the company is an understatement. The shares fell just 5.5pc on Wednesday by the close of trading, but what should be of more concern for investors who have bought in to Lenigas’s dreams is the long-term likelihood of oil being extracted.

For onlookers, this is yet another example of a lightly regulated company making bold claims. To be fair, it might be the case that some of the hype came as a result of journalists who cannot understand oil discovery data, but if UK Oil & Gas Investments were traded on the main market of the London Stock Exchange, this sort of announcement would be fully checked and verified before being released to the markets.

The cautionary tale of UK Oil & Gas Investments is not the first to trouble the LSE’s Aim market, nor will it be the last.

But until the junior market – which is patrolled by the British bourse itself, rather than the Financial Conduct Authority – tightens up its act, there is little to stop companies like UK Oil & Gas Investments, and the directors behind them, causing market mayhem.

[GRG55]

Re: Britan saved!!!!!!!!!!..............almost ;)

A little digging would have uncovered the facts about Sussex oil boom

Horse Hill might contain 100bn recoverable barrels of oil, but it equally might contain zero

...A week ago, UK Oil & Gas Investments, of which Lenigas is chairman and owns a 4.4pc stake, announced that there could be as much as 100bn barrels of fossil fuels under a large stretch of Sussex and Surrey Weald. To put that into context, Iran - which has almost 10pc of the world’s oil - has 160bn barrels of reserves, while the North Sea has delivered just 45bn barrels over the past 40 years...


...

100 billion barrels?

'It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.
Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.'

Sherlock Holmes

-A Scandal in Bohemia

That's 37% more oil than five of the largest oil companies in the world combined:

ExxonMobil - 25.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves (46% of which is natural gas)

BP - 17.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

Chevron Corp - 11.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

Royal Dutch Shell - 10.2 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

ConocoPhillips - 8.9 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves.

More oil than all of Russia (estimated 80 billion barrels)

As much oil as Kuwait (102 billion barrels)

But not quite as much as Saudi Aramco - 266 billion barrels of oil equivalent reserves

[Mega]

Re: Britan saved!!!!!!!!!!..............almost ;)

What did Mark Twain say about Mine owners?
;)
Mike

[Mega]

Re: Britan saved!!!!!!!!!!..............almost ;)

David Cameron will regret his spending promises

Britain's economic recovery has brought falling home ownership, spiralling inequality, and continued economic despondency

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A courageous leader would explain the dangers of spending and stress bringing down out debt Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/AP









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By Liam Halligan

3:30PM BST 18 Apr 2015
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Is it there yet? Can you sense it? Have the Conservatives managed to conjure from somewhere that all-important ingredient for electoral success? I’m referring, of course, to the failsafe elixir of vote-gathering, that vital campaigning tool – the feel-good factor.


The British economy, we’re repeatedly told, is booming. We live in the fastest-growing nation in Western Europe, with the UK expanding by 2.8pc last year, the quickest pace since 2006. National income per head is now almost 5pc higher than in 2010, when the last general election was held.


Launching his party’s manifesto last week, David Cameron did his best to generate a rhetorical feel-good factor. The Tories’ goal over the next five years, he exclaimed, is to “turn the good news on our economy into a good life for you and your family”.


This particular “good life” amounts not to a garden smallholding in Surbiton (younger readers type “Felicity Kendal” into a search engine). Cameron was offering, instead, affordable homes, more free childcare and lower taxes.


The Conservatives are “the party of working people”, he argued, pledging to give 1.3m families the chance to buy their housing association home at a discount. The Tories also vowed to freeze rail fares for five years, introduce an income tax-free minimum wage and scrap inheritance tax on homes worth up to £1m.


Unsurprisingly, Labour and the Liberal Democrats dismissed these pledges as “totally unfunded” and “a con” – not least because that’s what they were. By throwing around billions of pounds of spending promises without saying how they’d be paid for, the Tories undermined their strongest suit. There’s no benefit in giving Ed Miliband the opportunity to present himself as a paragon of fiscal virtue. And there’s certainly no feel-good factor in telling voters you’ll give them something they instinctively know you can’t.

It’s true the British economy is improving.

Last week the International Monetary Fund, having previously chided the UK, gave us a much-improved report card. Growth should remain steady at 2.7pc next year, the IMF said, with unemployment falling from 6.1pc to 5.4pc.

Last week’s news that consumer price inflation was zero during the year to March, largely due to the lower cost of oil and food imports, also allowed the Tories to counter Labour’s taunts about “the cost-of-living crisis”. This lack of price pressure, in addition, makes it less likely the Bank of England will raise interest rates over the coming months – granting a further reprieve to heavily-indebted households and firms.

Despite all that, the feel-good factor remains strangely elusive.

That’s precisely why Cameron felt the need to stress “the good news on the economy” – because so many of us haven’t noticed it in our lives. One reason is that, while national income is now about 2pc bigger than it was in mid-2008, just before the financial crisis, GDP per head remains lower once you factor in a 4pc population rise.

This failure of incomes to fully recover, in turn, is explained by falling real wages. Average pay has gone up a bit since before the credit crunch, but that increase has been more than wiped-out by inflation. That’s why, in today’s prices, average weekly wages are down from £540 in early 2008 to £480 now. No feel-good factor there.

Consider, also, that while UK house prices have recovered since the crash, and are up 11pc nationwide, that increase has been driven by the 35pc rise in London. Outside the South East, the recovery has been decidedly patchy. In six out of nine UK regions, in fact, house prices remain lower than they were six years ago – in some cases over 20pc lower. That explains why millions of households still aren’t “feeling good” about their economic circumstances.

While prices remain subdued in some areas, falling pay and a lack of job security still puts the dream of property ownership beyond the reach of millions of young adults – crushing their feel-good factor, and their parents’. That will remain true, as long as Britain continues to build too few houses.

Preliminary figures suggest almost 141,000 homes were completed across the UK last year – up 4pc on the year before. Yet even that higher figure remains 36pc below the 219,000 built in 2007-08. And that, in turn, is well short of the 250,000-plus dwellings we need annually, just to keep up with current demographic trends.

Every post-war UK recovery has been associated with a surge in house building, boosting the construction industry and providing affordable homes for aspirational families, while absorbing immigrant workers.

These processes spread wealth and confidence, while energising our labour force and entrenching the economic upturn. This latest recovery, in contrast, has brought falling home ownership, spiralling inequality, continued economic despondency and a nationally uncharacteristic resentment towards hard-working immigrants.

The UK housing market, for decades an engine of social mobility and economic security, has become instead a source of social exclusion and economic angst – not least as supply has stalled. And that goes a long way towards explaining the lack of a widespread feel-good factor.

On top of all that, while the IMF forecast of continued British economic buoyancy may be right, it may also turn out to be wrong. Beyond the headline forecast of a “solid UK recovery”, the fine print of the IMF’s report concedes that while “continued steady growth is expected”, it depends on or is at least “supported by” two key factors – “lower oil prices and improved financial market conditions”.

I’d say that both these assumptions are a very long way from “solid”.

Having surged some 40pc since mid-January, oil prices hit fresh 2015 peaks last Thursday, and are now consistently above $60 a barrel. This latest rise reflects the escalating conflict in Yemen, raising concerns about neighbouring Saudi Arabia. The growth of US crude inventories has also slowed to a trickle, the latest data show, as the Opec exporters’ cartel continues to squeeze American shale producers – part of a concerted bid to knock them out of action, before ramping crude prices back up.

Then there’s the somewhat tricky question of financial stability. It gives me no pleasure to write this, but it is palpably obvious that the threats to the UK’s financial stability are legion. For one thing, our recovery rests on a pyramid of debt – with personal indebtedness now above £1,400bn, an all-time high. British government debt, meanwhile, at least the share of it that’s on the books, is now pushing £1,600bn – having more than doubled since the credit crunch.

We’re meanwhile running an external deficit equal to 5.5pc of national income, the biggest import-export shortfall for almost 70 years. These ghastly economic realities make the UK extremely vulnerable to interest rate rises and systemic instability. And potential sources of such instability are all around us.

As Athens teeters on the brink of default (again), yields on Greek bonds soared last week as its creditors began to lose patience – raising the chances of a eurozone meltdown. The showdown between Ukraine and its creditors – even more ideologically charged than that between Athens and Brussels – could also turn nasty, again risking a sovereign default on the edge of Europe, an event that could become another “Lehman moment”.

A courageous political leader would explain such dangers, stressing the need for continued spending restraint and for Britain to cut its debts.

Yet Mr Cameron last week joined the campaigning fray, banning serious discussion and indulging, instead, in deluded spending promises. Voters will punish him for it.

[Mega]

Re: Britan saved!!!!!!!!!!..............almost ;)

"Then there’s the somewhat tricky question of financial stability. It gives me no pleasure to write this, but it is palpably obvious that the threats to the UK’s financial stability are legion.

For one thing, our recovery rests on a pyramid of debt – with personal indebtedness now above £1,400bn, an all-time high. British government debt, meanwhile, at least the share of it that’s on the books, is now pushing £1,600bn – having more than doubled since the credit crunch.

So the LIMEY "recovery" is all about MEGA Debt!

The 2 BIG questions are:-

Who "holds" the debt.....Us as in UK PLC...........or overseas?

Wil Rates EVER go up?

Mike