KinosisThe Early Feed work for Kinosis has been awarded - so I expect that something is going to have to give soon on this thing. Basically - since the hugely negative press, a few things have changed. First - production issues continue to plague these guys, but secondly, the price of synthetic has gone through the roof. These two have probably cancelled each other out.
I think the issue around debt restructuring is that OPC only has to show that they can get it restuctured to force the hand of a buyer. As I said, a buyer only needs two things to make a shitload on OPC. First, they need about $1B (combination of cash and stock depending on the company that buys it might be anywhere from $500m cash to $1B cash if it is a private company) to do the deal (Assuming $1.5 - $2 per share buyout). The $500M cash not used for share purchase would be added to OPCs cash on hand be to cost until breakeven (assuming cash flow BE by Q1 2012). The second thing they need is - confidence that this thing will actually break-even. Based on everyone I've spoken with it is when not if, and had NXY just listened to some of the other operators earlier, it would be fixed already.
The fact that no deal has been announced indicates that they haven't proven that they have fixed things yet, and now the April turnaround work is going to trash the April numbers.
At the World Heavy oil congress last month I spoke to a number of reservoir experts from various operators, including Connacher (who have experienced lean zones in their Great Divide project). The VP from CLL gave a really good presentation on what they found, what they learned, and what they are doing about it. A good deal has been learned about how to deal with them and one of the biggest issues with NXY is that they don't/won't listen to anyone and have to do everything their own way. I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the mtgs between OPC and NXY because they must be prettty interesting. In the end - if this thing blows up, I would say that OPC shareholders would have a better chance with a class action against NXY than against OPC (not that I think either would be winnable)