Sunday, June 06, 2010

Investing Shenanigans

Of course from an investing perspective BP Oil shares have been the the largest quoted company for some while whose shareholders have had to take an unwanted roller coaster ride. Hopefully the latest attempts to stem the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico will succeed. If so as well as bringing relief to the local inhabitants and ecosystems there will relief for shareholders - Maybe its share price will gain a few % points this week.

Smaller oil companies however have also been giving their shareholders some thrills thankfully without spills. The report last week of a discovery of a new comparatively prolific light oil field in the UK's North Sea, caused the shareprices of companies with stakes in the field to soar; Nautical by 200% and Encore by something under 100% in a day. Their discoveries are potentially great news for the UK economy yet so keen does the media these days seeem to be on emphasising the bad news of the world and restricting good news newflow that outside of the business pages these North Sea oil discoveries received barely a mention.

Then those small oilies in the South Atlantic appear to be finding large volumes of oil albeit deep under the sea with the result that their shareprices too soared yet Rockhopper Oil's shareprice also collapsed momentarily last week apparently on rumours that the worth of oil find was exaggerated.

Shares investing is rarely dull.

EDIT; Lack of dullness continued today - 7th June - Regal Petroleum's huge success in its oil/gas drilling operations in the Ukraine announced today did wonders for its sharprice too and will doubtless help the Ukraine's negotiating position next time Russia's Gasprom threatens to turn off the Russian gas taps.

Yet only in November 2009 did the BBC report:

Oil exploration firm Regal Petroleum has been fined £600,000 by the London Stock Exchange (LSE) for "serious breaches" of exchange rules.

The LSE said Regal had failed to ensure its announcements were not misleading or false and to release price-sensitive information quickly enough

Those shenanigans resulted in what was then the largest fine imposed on an AIM quoted company.

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