News

November 30, 2008

Conference Report 1: Reasons To Be Cheerful For Weary Oilbarrel.com Delegates As Richmond Energy, Petroceltic International And Emerald Energy Hint At Better Times Ahead

By Martin Clark

Another packed house, Oilbarrel’s 22nd conference offered some crumbs of comfort to investors still left scratching their heads as to where it all went wrong. At the previous event, held in September, at the now familiar venue, The Brewery, delegates were rapidly trying to digest the flurry of news headlines proclaiming global financial meltdown. A topic of some magnitude for most ordinary minds, the effects of this deepening financial crisis are still unfolding. For many an investment manager in the City, these have been difficult times. Anyone who stuffed their portfolio full of oil stocks – from individuals to institutions – has almost certainly felt the downward spiral in valuations where it hurts the most, in the pocket, as share prices tumbled and the oil price collapsed. Still, at least they didn’t invest in the banking and financial services sector.

Trying to make sense of it all was opening speaker Keith Myers of Richmond Energy Partners, drawing on the experiences of the REP30 – a basked of 30 small to mid-size E&P firms that includes a number of oilbarrel.com regulars such as Afren, Bowleven and PA Resources. How things have changed during the year, he noted. In the summer, when the oil price raced ahead to US$147 per barrel, all the talk was of how high this figure could go before people started ditching their cars. Now, with crude at...