Supergiants like Exxon are focused on big offshore venues like Guyana and Namibia, leaving behind prime onshore natural gas assets in Europe – a region that is now desperate for affordable domestic resources that aren’t controlled by Russian Gazprom.
Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Gazprom was calling the energy shots in Germany.
Those days are over.
But Germany, the European Union’s biggest economy, still needs natural gas, even if this winter’s storage is nearly full. It’s not full as a result of domestic sources. Germany has traded one form of dependence for another. The filling up of winter storage has come at a high price tag thanks to expensive LNG imports, which are now at risk, as well, due to the Biden administration’s pause on new LNG export projects. At the height of the crisis, the European Union was paying some 40% more for U.S. LNG imports than it was for Russian piped gas.
While Germany is busy building grandiose, high-dollar LNG receiving terminals, there is a far cheaper domestic alternative, and it’s found in assets abandoned by the supergiants who are off chasing bigger oil and gas dreams offshore.
What’s too small for Exxon and others, could be of huge potential value to smaller industry players.
That’s what MCF Energy (TSXV:MCF; OTC:MCFNF) is focusing on. We believe this is the first new public company providing investors with exposure to European natural gas since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The big names behind MCF Energy have a clear track record in developing energy assets for top-dollar exits, and they see the timing as the most propitious yet.
The Top People in the Industry for Europe’s Energy Reset
The company is no stranger to Europe’s energy industry.
It was co-founded by oil and gas investor Ford Nicholson who has a track record of developing billion-dollar international assets and offloading them for top dollar to giants such as Exxon. In total, Ford has exited around $4.5 billion in energy assets in Europe and Asia.
In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Nicholson launched an energy company in Kazakhstan that was sold in 2006 for approximately $1.6 billion. In 2004, he co-founded a company that developed Europe’s largest heavy oilfield, in Albania (Bankers Petroleum Albania, Ltd) worth about $2.25 billion by 2011.
The story here is one that MCF Energy could be aiming to repeat in today’s Europe, which is in the middle of an energy reset worth trillions of dollars–and the biggest near-term prize is natural gas.
With its world-class team, Bankers Petroleum saw production grow by over 2,000% between inception in 2004 and 2015. Only 13 months after launch, its enterprise value increased by over 1,000% before being acquired by Geo-Jade Petroleum in 2016. But the story didn’t end there. BNK Petroleum was spun out of Bankers Petroleum in 2008 to explore for shale gas in Europe and developing gas assets in the United States. Between 2009 and 2011, BNK saw a market valuation increase of over 4,000% and became one of the largest holders of oil and gas rights in Europe.
In 2017, as Deputy Chairman, Nicholson sold another oil and gas company, InterOil, to Exxon for approximately $2.6 billion.
Now he’s back with MCF Energy (TSXV:MCF; OTC:MCFNF), which has rapidly acquired a portfolio of attractive natural gas projects in Germany and Austria. They have just started drilling in one of their most prospective areas.
Ford is backed by an impressive executive team and board, which includes former NATO Supreme Allied Commander of Europe, General Wesley Clark, who is committed to helping ensure Europe’s energy security and independence from Russian oil and gas.
MCF’s CEO is James Hill, the geologist behind BNK Petroleum which delivered major wins for early investors. The executive chairman is Jay Park, a renowned international energy lawyer based in London and Istanbul. Park is also the former Chairman of Reconnaissance Energy
Africa, which is exploring one of the biggest emerging oil plays in the world, in the African frontier of Namibia.
Finally, director Richard Wadsworth, also a former Bankers Petroleum figure, is a 30-year petroleum engineer veteran who most recently led and developed a 55,000 bopd oilfield in Iraq that has a development plan for 230,000 bopd.
Key Assets Where Europe Needs It Most
The first drill, that will launch next week, is in Austria, at MCF Energy’s Welchau prospect near the Austrian Alps. This prospect is analogous to large anticline structures discovered in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Italian Apennines.
Welchau is adjacent to an up-dip from a discovery that intersected at a gas column of at least 400 meters, testing condensate rich for pipeline quality gas. A national gas pipeline network is only 18…
Read More: This Could Be A Gamechanger For Natural Gas In Europe