GKP Gramacho 5 Feb ' Feedback on GKP presentation'

My recent post on main board

Fantastic selection of posts on the Proactive presentation and done so promptly. By the time I got home you had reported on nearly everything so I will concentrate on what has not been covered and just re-emphasise a couple of points that have already been made. In addition I will attempt to clarify a few things that Ewen had said and not said during that evening by reference to a phone call that I had with John Gerstenlauer , the COO, today.

PI Presentation and Evening Discussion
• The first thing I learnt was how to pronounce “ Shaiken”!
• They were completely surprised that DGA included the speculative gas volumes underneath the drilled intervals. He believes they made the estimate by looking at the Jabal Kand well logs.
• I asked him whether they had conducted an assay on the oil recovered from the well tests but he wasn’t able to say so we are no wiser on the potential discount to Brent.
• John G’s estimate of 30-35% RF for Shaikan comes from his experience on a heavy oil field in Yemen that is naturally fractured.
• Sh-2 will cost about $25MM. Ewan said they are going to modify their drilling technique to try to improve drilling rates.
• During the presentation he pointed to two locations for future appraisal wells one of which was on the eastern edge of the structure. He did not mention the shallow well in the presentation that we have seen tender information on and said afterwards that the well is not confirmed, they are only thinking about it (but this was later clarified by JG).
• I was surprised to learn that the seismic line spacing on Shaikan is 4km. You could miss half the N Sea satellite tie backs with that spacing. But of course Shaikan is 35-40 km long so they have 10 lines across it (Nth – Sth). This helps explain the uncertainty in closure contour. The mapping program has to interpolate/extrapolate across the 4km spacing or beyond the final line. BBBS or Ads_lon could comment more but I recall course 2-D surveys typically have 1 -2 km line spacing.
• The Etamic deal was done about the end of June. He described how delays occur in obtaining approvals/signatures in terms of how difficult it is to get time with those with the authority to approve deals. The latter two points and their concern about seeps on Shaikan possibly equating to the structure having leaked (down to a residual, immovable oil saturation) do explain the Etamic deal. GKP must have lacked confidence in the seal to have offered the terms that they, sorry he, got.
• I found Ewen a very straight guy, nothing in the body language to worry those concerned about the Etamic deal.
• It was really good to hear that GKP took planning for the well tests very seriously. Due to the concerns about the H2S they went to the extent of planning to temporarily re-house the nearby villagers. Ewan said the last thing they wanted to do was gas the Kurds! Apparently they had set a precedent as no one had talked to the local authority before about H2S issues. It is an important operational point. There would be serious implications if a major incident took place and it is better they err well on the side of safety.
• The 13Bn OIP P1 has still not been explained properly and I think Ewen contributed to the confusion. I will cover this in a separate note because the key learning could be relevant if you hold other small oil stocks, especially Kurdistan ones.

So a great evening, it was good to meet you dhatrader and although we didn’t exchange names I know I must have met several more of you based on the same conversations we heard whilst pinning Ewen against the wall during the drinks/canapé session.

Oh nearly forgot to mention the CNN interview. Ewan said that Todd was not aware the camera was running, he thought they were having an informal discussion.


Phone Call with JG Today
• JG was bullish on the recovery factor based on his experience with the Masik? Field in Yemen which he described as starting out at 240,000 bopd and still producing about 200,000 bopd 18 years later. It was of a similar gravity and very low GOR but the wells still produced at high rates through the fracture network. However this must be going back a few years as I can’t find any mention of it and the entire country only produces 400-500,000 bopd nowadays. We also discussed recovery mechanisms but he asked for his speculative comments not to be put in a blog.
• He was also confident that the drilling performance would improve markedly on Sh-2 now they know what they are dealing with. There was a lost circulation zone at about 500m that caused a lot of difficulties. If this is known ahead of time normal procedure would be to plan the casing program with this in mind and run casing once through the zone and cement off the trouble zone behind pipe. If you have not planned for this and do set pipe this means that you have used up one of your casing strings and of course the subsequent hole size is reduced. The consequence is that you have one casing string too few and run the risk of not being able to get to TD. GKP elected not to run pipe and soldiered on to the next planned casing point running into difficulty drilling ahead. They will amend their casing program on Sh-2 to avoid the difficulties of Sh-1.
• We also talked about the famous pressure gradient plot. He said the pressure information was extremely good and there was high confidence in the data. He inferred that DGA had seen it and in their report they refer to GKP’s pressure build up analysis but don’t say that they have interpreted it independently. He also said they could see tidal effects which is a bit strange in the middle of the desert!
• JG said they were mostly focused on proving areal extent in Sh-2 and not actively searching for the OWC. It would be ideal for the biggest movement in share price if they could position it sufficiently down dip to do both. It will be down dip but finding the OWC does not seem to be in the top priority at the moment.
• It was good to hear GKP have a few people with H2S experience. He was involved in developing the record highest H2S property in the US, 86% H2S. Nasty stuff!
• He confirmed Ewen’s comments about the DGA gas estimates. There was a very good correlation between the JK-1 well and Sh-1 even though they are 26km apart. The high P interval in Sh-1 is a thick interval in JK-1 and led to DGA’s confidence to issue the very significant gas estimates. GKP are planning to have the capability to handle higher pressures than they saw at TD in case they were still in a transition zone when they had to abandon drilling so they should be able to get into the Permian.
• The 5000bopd rates shown for the Butmah in a couple of the recent presentations are a typo. They estimated the rate as nearer to 2000bopd even though it did not flow to surface.
• The test in Sh-1 will comprise a separate 1 day test in each of the DST 2 and 3 intervals. DST 2 only flowed at 120 bbl/d and DST 3 was the Butmah. An ESP will be used to pump the intervals to demonstrate that they can be produced at commercial rates. The extended test will be on the DST 1 interval in the Sargelu that produced at 7400 bbl/d. He implied they would not be pumping this interval which infers that the well was choked back on test if they they think it is capable of the 10,000 bbl/d that has been mentioned consistently in presentations.
• JG was very confident that they would drill the shallow well once the Sh-1 well is put on long term test. I said this would be a useful addition to the OIP at which point he laughed. Apparently they feel (rightly) that they have found a massive amount of oil but every time he speaks to a PI they want more (lol).
• JG said that he has never seen a well like this in his 35 yrs (me too) and that they will be writing papers about the technical analysis of it for years to come. Apparently they all were walking around the office looking like they had won the lottery as the well unfolded.
• On Sh-1 MOL were good partners and didn’t hassle GKP to issue information. On AB-1 MOL are drilling it as a tight hole. JG said they were trying to repay the favour and would issue an RNS when it was required by AIM rules but it sounded like they wouldn’t be trying to broadcast at every opportunity. They will be negotiating the amount of information to be released.
• Finally he mentioned, as did Ewen, that they were looking for opportunities to acquire additional interest in other licences.

A good guy, very accessible. I was most impressed, I called the London office this morning and got a call back within an hour or so from the US at what must have been about 05:30 a.m. That’s being pretty responsive to a shareholder call.

Regards,
Gramacho