thoughts on fundermantals, page-4

You're welcome Dafeipo,

1 Operation risk:

As far as I know there was no CBM expert or even a proven practitionner of conventional O&G operations at the board until Rod Bresnehan was promoted. In a way, he can be considered as a CBM specialist.
Re the vote, there is going to be an AGM before the end of the year, so you can vote and reform the board.

2 Environmental risk:

The french response to the oil crisis in the 70's was to speed up the nuclearization. But nuclear plants are a bit on/off in their behaviour, they do not adapt readily to consumption peaks and alternative power generation have to be used in any case. CBM will never replace the nuclear for base requirements but what is aimed is to lessen the grip of russian on gas as secondary supply.
Nuclear accidents as reported by ASN have never so far been close to 3-milles Islands or Tchernobyl disasters. May be the good side of EDF state ownership. Safety was not sacrified for dividends. This may explain why nuclear power was never seriously challenged in the past.

This will change with the disastrous performance in building scandinavian EPR and growing concern about the number of "accidents". Reliability and actual cost of the nuclear industry will ne reviewed.

Regarding the CO2, France, thanks to atom, is already compliant with kyoto requirements, so the GEG are not so big an issue as in other countries. The coming Carbon taxation is a political posture and not a necessity.
EGL would however be in much better situation if it could prove some CCS when the technologies will be ripe, that is within 5-7 years. It has the possibly convenient storage sites with deep coal seams.

Just a quick word regarding acceptability of coal/CBM projects in some areas. About 2 years ago, two competitor companies applied for a coal mining projects. The local ecologists made a row and were quite successful in involving political and in having the applicants abandon the projects. One of them came back with a combined CBM/CO2 sequestration project but was equally rejected by the population (it was hot from the previous projects)

This proves that public relations regarding environnemental issues can be tricky regardless of the actual project. It is an actual issue.

3 Water problem:

We agree, the problem is not technical but mostly financial.

4 Electricity:

The french electricity market is dominated by EDF and the french state still is the main shareholder. The 20% price increase has not been accepted by the state for political reasons but in the long term we seem to go to a global energy market which base price will be based on the oil market.
The EC has reiterated the necessity for the actual opening of the energy market in France, the latter being currently highly theoretical .
Given the world energy consumption trend, the price of energy is not likely to fall on the long term.

All god for EGL then... if it can produce.

5 Cost:

Plenty of room there for cost cutting & improvements.
EPG has offices in Paris (in one of the most expensive area center of Paris), Lens, Freyming (oversized) and Perth whereas they have only one production centre and no usual operation elsewhere.
It boosts the costs, prevents team works and it impairs synergy between the various competences. It multiplies the office staff and the time losses when travelling from one site to the other. It causes avoidable restaurant and hotel bills.

The administrative/technical staff ratio is over 50/50. This is not sound for a, start up EP company whose future relies heavily on a technical challenge. The highest salaries are for non-technical persons and this questions the priorities of EGL management.

The cost reduction effect that you have seen on paper is unfortunately a facade. The operations and operational capabilities have been slashed but the office costs have exploded. This is another point that the new board will have to address urgently. It is aware of this and I am confident that it will act.

Cheers
Z