Pescod's Late Edition... Anyway we catch up with Dick Gusella who runs not only Con-
nacher Oil and Gas which saw their stock trashed in the sell off in
oil prices and their five year plan delayed dramatically, but Petrolif-
era was also another company he is the key guy in and Whether
you’re oil and gas assets would be in the tar sands or Argentina
you just could not escape the malaise. But now things are getting
better and suddenly Petrolifera has had a huge move today and a
few others. They’ve just announced that the La Pinta well in Co-
lombia after being several weeks longer than expected and instead
of costing 8 million costing more than 12 million and posing all
sorts of technical problems has been drilled to depth and it looks
like they’ve got about 450 feet+ of hydrocarbon potential that will
be tested over the next while. Gusella reminds us that this is al-
ways an area that had big potential for reserves should it hit. So
this testing will be interesting.
Meanwhile Petrolifera continues plans to sell assets in Argen-
tina where oil prices are capped but I suspect anyone who has
been following Petrolifera for all this time knows that it wasn’t Ar-
gentina or Colombia that was supposed to create big excitement
for this company. It was their plays in the Ucayali Basin in Peru,
and after some successful ventures in Argentina, and what may be
surprising good news out of Colombia, it’s still a matter of when
will they be able to go and see what it is they may have in Peru.
Meanwhile today’s market action might frustrate analysts as
CIBC has recently increased their target on Petrolifera from $1.50
to $2, Scotia from $1.75 to $2.10 but today Petrolifera flies through
both of those targets.
When we cornered Gusella we ask our favorite question “Could
you please give us your ideas of where oil and gas prices will
close by this Christmas and obviously he’s hopeful as he suggests
oil will see $70 by then but natural gas not so nice as he targets $4
for the Canadian prices at AECO. As far as his stock pick knowing
that he can’t pick his own, he goes with Galleon Energy and while
he suggests he’d rather have bought it at $3 than today’s huge
move to $6 he still thinks it’s a great story.