Swingingk
JUST GOT THRU:

quote:

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Originally posted by manofstocks:
From another board (from a reliable source, DSG) Here it is...

"A little birdie told me announcements WILL be made Wed that we have b2 & b4."
GLTA,
dsg

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quote:

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Originally posted by manofstocks:
anybody have anything to say? except we will get awards.

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Basic petinent info from article for ERHC.
1.Blocks 2 and 4 should go through before end of month.
2.Apparently another mid sized oil company to partner in block 4 Noble Drilling. Pioneer had already announced joint venture with ERHC in block 2. (These partners are especially important as good working partners will be needed in later awarded blocks both in JDZ and EEZ Where ERHC has rights to 2 complete blocks.)
3. Still decent chance block 6 may be awarded by end of month also. This is what is apparently holding up announcments on block 2 and 4.
4. Some or all blocks not awarded MAY BE open to direct bid instead of going through entire new bidding round.

Now for the article:

AWARDS BOGGED DOWN IN THE GULF OF GUINEA

EXPECTATIONS that a few more blocks in the deep waters of the Gulf of Guinea would be awarded by mid-August were dashed last week as it became apparent that talks with potential suitors over block 6 between Nigeria and Sao Tome had become bogged down.
However, the Abuja-based Joint Development Authority administering the round under joint Nigerian/Sao Tomean auspices is understood to be determined to confirm key awards by the end of the month.

Operatorship of Joint Development Zone block 1 has gone to ChevronTexaco with ExxonMobil picking junior equity and final terms and conditions for a formal PSC award are expected shortly following negotiations in London this week.

US explorer Pioneer Natural Resources' formal closure last week of a joint JDA participation deal with minnow Environmental Remediation Holding Corporation also bodes well for an imminent announcement on blocks 2 and 4, where ERHC has a priority rights arrangement. JDZ block 2 is understood to be a done deal with would-be operator Pioneer hoping to finalise PSC terms by the third quarter.

Negotiating positions on block 4 are less certain, with Petrobras also showing persistent interest and Noble Drilling actually preparing to commit a rig in the context of its emerging alliance with ERHC for the purpose of bidding the block.

Domestic pressure to "Nigerianise" some aspect of the exercise has increased the likelihood of local independent participation in block 6, perhaps in connection with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Chinese interest has also been noted with Beijing always keen to expand its portfolio.

Patience on both sides of the water is wearing thin, however. Official talk this week is of giving the process a few more days and if the modalities for awarding block 6 cannot be agreed then it will lumped in with the other five unallocated permits for possible award next year nine blocks were originally offered.

Nigeria is gearing up for a new deep-water licensing round in its own Exclusive Economic Zone, and Sao Tome is loath to see future JDZ signature bonuses diminished by forcing companies to compete with Abuja's licensing schedules.

Following a meeting last weekend between Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Fradique de Menezes, there are fresh indications that remaining JDZ blocks may be open for direct tender rather than by open competitive bidding as required by the Statute governing the JDA. Such a move is likely to cause legal controversy and may be subject to a successful renegotiation of the bilateral protocol establishing the JDZ.

The prospect of negotiating directly with the JDA for unallocated acreage would have the advantage of allowing medium to bigger sized players back into the game, having failed to bid the first time around.

The interest of sidelined players would then be rekindled while Sao Tome would not have to accept lower-than-expected signature bonuses.

FORTUNE September 6, 2004

SAO TOMÉ
WILL OIL SPOIL THIS
AFRICAN PARADISE?

IN THE FOOTHILLS OF SAO TOMÉ'S
volcanic mountains, where dense jungle
meets the edge of a tiny island capital,
samba rhythms emanate from a pink
wooden hut. Locals come here to lunch on
shark boiled in lemon juice and play a few
rounds of a card game called bishka.

"Sure, it's a hard life," says Roldo Pereira,
a retired cocoa-plantation worker. "Sometimes
I go two days without a beer."

Pereira could soon be drinking champagne
every night. Oil has been discovered
in the waters around this former Portuguese
colony of twin islands in the Gulf of Guinea.
And while oil companies won't reveal how
much they expect to pump, estimates from
seismic surveys run as high as 15 billion barrels
in just one zone that has been put up for
bid. That would be the equivalent of every
one of Sao Tomé's 140,000 men, women,
and children winning the lottery.

Outsiders also stand to gain. As the oil
zone borders on waters off Nigeria, Sao
Tomé agreed to give its giant neighbor 60%
percent of future profits.

In April a consortium of ChevronTexaco
and Exxon Mobil announced it would make
a $123 million down payment for the right to
explore just one of the zone's nine blocks.
Since then the island's only international hotel
has been filled with consultants, diplomats, and
businessmen
looking to offer services and expertise.

U.S. government officials are also dropping
by. In addition to its oil, Sao Tomé is
of growing strategic importance to the U.S.
It is halfway between Angola and Nigeria,
Africa's two largest oil producers, and close
by two of its fastest-growing, Equatorial
Guinea and Congo-Brazzaville. Within a
decade the U.S. is expected to be importing
25% of its oil from the continent, much
of it from these countries, which are closer
to the U.S. than the Persian Gulf and
whose oil is of higher quality.

But Africa is not exactly stable, and oil
doesn't seem to have helped. Africans who
live in petroleum-rich states are
poorer on average than those in
other countries and more likely to
suffer repressive governments and
violent conflicts.

Sao Tomé has for the most part
been a peaceful democracy, with
low crime and no religious or ethnic
conflict. But political tensions are
rising. President Fradique de
Menezes was temporarily overthrown
last year in a bloodless, almost
amicable coup. "I didn't want
to hurt anyone," coup leader Major
Fernando Pereira told FORTUNE.

"I just wanted to wake up
the politicians now that we have
oil." Pereira and his supporters
agreed to return to their barracks,
though he predicts another coup "if
the population doesn't start seeing improvements
soon."

The problem is that the Sao Tomé government
doesn't yet have any oil revenue.
"Agreements are still being negotiated,"
says a spokesperson for ChevronTexaco.
"We don't expect to begin exploring before
the end of the year." In the meantime,
the government's annual budget
comes mostly from foreign aid-a paltry
$55 million, about a fifth of the annual
budget of the New York Public Library.
"We are doing what we can," Menezes told
FORTUNE. "But people's expectations are
so high."

Even when the oil revenue begins to flow,
some development experts say, the government
won't be capable of spending the money effectively.
"The
country doesn't have a real administration,"
says Joachim Harnack, the IMF mission
chief for Sao Tomé. "Very few civil servants
have the necessary education or
training." Indeed, there is no university in
Sao Tomé and only one high school.

That may account for some extraordinary
blunders. In 1997, when the government
tried to set up a national oil company,
a tiny, undercapitalized Houston firm with
the unlikely name of Environmental Remediation
Holding Corp. got a 49% share
in exchange for doing what many observers
say was next to nothing. The deal was renegotiated
after the IMF complained of a
"serious governance problem" in Sao Tomé's
oil sector. But ERHC, which has since
been taken over by Nigerian billionaire
Emeka Offor, will still receive preference
in bidding for future licenses.

There are even stranger deals. Earlier this
year a subsidiary of DiamondWorks, a
Canadian company associated more with
mercenaries in Sierra Leone and
Angola than with the oil industry,
was awarded 70% of the revenue
from the sale of crude oil
that the Nigerian government
gave Sao Tomé as part of a
byzantine arrangement. Some
observers say Nigeria hasn't
helped its tiny neighbor, but Nigeria's ambassador
to Sao Tomé, Saidu Pindar, insists
that Sao Tomé is benefiting from Nigeria's
experience with the oil industry. "Before
we created the joint authority, Exxon Mobil
grabbed four of the oil blocks for just $1 million
each," he says. "We helped renegotiate,
and now Exxon Mobil and ChevronTexaco
are jointly paying $123 million for just one
block."

To Terry Linn Karl, author of The Paradox
of Plenty, the threat that oil poses to
Sao Tomé is mostly internal. "Oil generates
money but not employment," she says,
"while oil exports undermine the productivity
of other economic sectors. People become
poorer and more frustrated with
their governments, while their governments
increasingly rely on petrodollars to repress
or co-opt growing opposition."

Experts largely agree with her diagnosis
but disagree on the remedy. After visiting
Sao Tomé in June, the UN Secretary-General's
General's economic advisor on development issues,
Columbia University professor Jeffrey
Sachs, called on donors to make
greater investments in the country's infrastructure.
But Harnack, the IMF mission
chief, says poor countries like Sao Tomé
lack the capacity to rapidly absorb such
beneficence: "The quality of projects will
inevitably be poor, and much of
the money will be wasted."

Sachs admits that corruption
and mismanagement often undermine
public investments. But
he has brought in experts from
his Earth Institute to work with
Sao Tomé legislators to strictly
regulate how the government manages its
oil revenue. In June, Menezes, along with
Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo,
signed a declaration obliging authorities to
make public all agreements with oil companies.

But on their own, such declarations
are worthless if the government doesn't have
systems in place to follow through. "It's hard
to say how things will turn out," says Gerhard
Seibert, a Sao Tomé expert at the Institute
for Security Studies in South Africa.

EHRC grabs Nigeria blocks

21:56 GMT

US explorer Environmental Remediation Holdings (EHRC) is back on track for clinching operatorship of blocks 2 and 4 in the Joint Development Zone administered by Nigeria and the archipelagic state of Sao Tome & Principe.

US explorer Environmental Remediation Holdings (EHRC) is back on track for clinching operatorship of blocks 2 and 4 in the Joint Development Zone administered by Nigeria and the archipelagic state of Sao Tome & Principe.

ExxonMobil was this week holding meetings with all interested parties in an attempt to snare a piece of the action despite having declined to bid the acreage when it had the chance in last year's round.

Official sources in the Nigerian capital hinted both blocks were now done deals with ERHC jointly applying with Dallas-based Pioneer Natural Resources for block 2 and with Noble Energy for block 4. Noble sealed the deal by committing a rig for initial operations in the ultra deep play.

Protracted discussions over the award of block 6 are coming to an end with officials on both sides of the Gulf of Guinea keen to get exploration moving after years of delay. Nine blocks were originally offered with operatorship of block 1 awarded to ChevronTexaco with ExxonMobil claiming junior equity.

The remaining six blocks will be thrown back into the hat for rebidding by the Joint Development Authority almost immediately in order not to compromise a parallel deepwater round proposed by Nigeria for its own Exclusive Economic Zone in 1Q 2005.

quote:

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Originally posted by manofstocks:
I'm back big T. I am so tired of the delays, but these deals take time. This could be the weekend, but I don't want to jinx ERHC. I have way too many shares, but I think it will be worth it. Multiple authors (other than just Barry Morgan) are saying B2 & B4 will be announced, but B6 will be tossed back in for rebid. I believe that things will start happening quickly. Nigeria is sweetening up the bid process for the EEZ, which should be announced in Q1 of 05'. I think by Christmas all JDZ blocks will be announced so that the JDZ and EEZ do not paralell eachother. I can't wait to see guys like you earn some money from this stock. I will always own shares of this one-in-a-million company. This is all just my opinion of course!!! Research before investing.

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About the EEZ bid by Nigeria - This is not the EEZ of Sao Tome which ERHC is involved with but total different area under Nigeria's control and unless ERHC bids on some of these blocks, which is a long shot, they will not be involved.

That said the JDZ looks good and I believe block 6 will be worked out as well as blocks 2 and 4. My understanding is the announcement would have already come down otherwise. Directorship in both 2 and 4 looks assured so whatever ha[[aens otherwise its all good right now.

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 23, 2004--Environmental Remediation Holding Corporation (ERHC) (OTCBB:ERHC - News) announced today that it has signed a participation agreement with Noble Energy International, Ltd., a subsidiary of Noble Energy Inc. (NYSE:NBL - News) whereby the companies will jointly evaluate and negotiate participation in Block 4 of the Nigeria/Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone ("JDZ") in the Gulf of Guinea, offshore West Africa.
This will continue Noble's recent expansion in West Africa and should complement its successful activities in Equatorial Guinea. Noble's successes in production and marketing of natural gas, condensate and gas utilization give it additional flexibility in evaluating and monetizing hydrocarbon discoveries.

Mr. Ali Memon, president and CEO of ERHC, said today: "Noble's experience and superior performance in deep water and participation in record setting offshore operations are factors that make Noble an excellent choice for ERHC."

ERHC is an oil and gas company focused on exploration in the Gulf of Guinea offshore West Africa. ERHC's headquarters are in Houston. For more information, visit ERHC's Web site at www.erhc.com.

Noble Energy, based in Houston, ranks as one of the largest independent exploration and production companies in the United States with operations throughout the major basins in the United States including the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, as well as internationally, in Argentina, China, Ecuador, Equatorial Guinea, the Mediterranean Sea and the North Sea. Noble Energy markets natural gas and crude oil through its subsidiary, Noble Energy Marketing Inc. For more information, visit Noble's Web site at www.nobleenergyinc.com.

The statements in this document are forward-looking statements made pursuant to the Safe Harbor Provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements and the business prospects of ERHC are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results in future periods to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties are described on Forms 10-Q and 10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Contact:
ERHC, Houston
John Coleman, 713-626-4700
or
Noble, Houston
Greg Panagos, 281-872-3100