Traders Cafe with Zak Mir: African Pioneer, Canadian Overseas, Cloudbreak, Hurricane Energy, i3 Energy, Oracle Power, Pensana

Hot on the heels of CEO share buying at the end of last week, we were treated to an update on Oracle Power’s (ORCP) flagship Thar Block VI project in Pakistan. The update comes in the wake of the recent approval of the Indicative Generation Capacity Expansion Plan 2021-2030, prepared by the National Transmission Dispatch Company in Pakistan. Oracle confirmed that the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority has approved a plan to expand electricity generation capacity from the existing 34,776MW to 61,112MW by 2030. In addition, NEPRA has directed the NTDC to consider the Company's Thar Block VI Project for inclusion in the next IGCEP annual review. Oracle added that it is actively evaluating a coal-to-gas (for urea) project, and coal-to-liquids project, further utilising the 1.4 billion tonnes of coal at the Thar Block VI project.

There was a somewhat counterintuitive reaction to the latest announcement from Canadian Overseas (COPL) regarding a share consolidation. The one post-consolidation Common Share for each one hundred pre-consolidation Common Shares should be beneficial to liquidity in the stock given it will allow COPL's Canadian investors into the fray, who hitherto have been blocked by the stock trading below 1c. In particular, this will favour the potential entry of institutional investors from across the pond. The shares started to flirt with recent sub 0.3p support from earlier in the month on the news, and have so far held this zone.

There was a decent share price reaction to the latest interim report and dividend declaration from i3 Energy (I3E). This was perhaps not surprising given the company announcing a sustained average production above 9,000 boepd for the sixth month period courtesy of its operations management and targeted maintenance capital allocation. All of this for a market cap of just over £150m. There would appear to be more to come as far as production is concerned given that post period i3 acquired circa 8,400 boepd (51% oil and NGLs) of low decline production from Cenovus Energy Inc, located within i3's Central Alberta core area, for a total consideration of CAD$65 million ($53.7 million).

Bulls of natural resource project generator Cloudbreak Discovery (CDL), will be hoping that the latest news from the stock market newcomer will start to turn the share price around. The company announced that an exploration programme on the five recently staked Northwestern British Columbian polymetallic projects has commenced. This represents the first field work Cloudbreak will conduct on these projects. The Properties are located in Northwestern British Columbia and are prospective for base and precious metals which could occur in several deposit types.

There was a nudge higher of around 7% for copper-gold exploration and development company, African Pioneer (AFP). Last month it said it had entered into an agreement to acquire a further 15% interest in its Ongombo Project and Ongeama Project in Namibia, increasing its interest in the Namibian Projects to 85%. Presumably some in the market are looking forward to fresh news given that at the end of August the company said it had commenced preparations for applying for a mining licence for the Ongombo Project. At the time it also said it has accelerated its review of the projects technical information.

Shares of Hurricane Energy (HUR) have been a three steps up / two steps down recovery play, helped along by the rising crude oil price and news earlier this month that the production rate immediately following the completion of the annual shutdown was elevated leading to the average oil rate for August being higher than in previous months. As of 15 September 2021, Lancaster was producing c.10,800 bopd from the P6 well alone with an associated water cut of c.33%.

Magnet metals specialist Pensana (PRE) saw its shares rise 8% after providing an exploration update from its Coola project located 16 kilometres north of the company's Longonjo rare earth development in Angola. The magnet metals group said that having identified highly anomalous technology metals including rare earths, scandium and fluorite in soils surrounding the 7,500 km2 Coola project in 2020, field exploration activities resumed in Q3 2021.