Bankers could become a go to name..... If an investor want to invest in a Canadian listed heavy oil developer and producer, Bankers could become a great choice. If the geopolitical risk is seen to be significantly mitigated by Taci being ousted and the general geo-risk in Albania is seen to be lowering, Bankers offers 10-15% production growth, potential of the unlocking of a huge contingent resource and are realizing 80% of Brent which is current around a whopping $95 per bbl. Heavy oil E&Ps in Western Canada are currently being heavily penalized on the discount to WTI being over $20 so a company like Baytex is likely realizing $75 or even less. Same with CNQ and others. Even the light oil producers are getting hosed from the landlocking of production.
If an investor is looking for potentially significant stable capital appreciation over the next five years Bankers is becoming more and more de-risked from a number perspectives. Just need to continue to improve the reserves economics and consistently meet production guidance). High Brent prices certainly help but they certainly cannot be counted on to stay at current levels. If the market believed they could stay at nearly $120, that in itself would serve as a major catalyst for the stock price as they are currently realizing close to $100 per bbl which is like realizing full WTI with no discount. Heavy oil producers in NA could only dream of realizing such a high crude price.
It will also be very beneficial to get clarification of decline rates. If the latter rates (after initial decline) can decrease to 15% from 25% (which analysts are using in their models), it would be a major improver of reserves economics and positively impact both production growth rate and NAV. Bankers had alluded to this in recent discussions (see Jennings recent report exrtract below for details)
Extracted from report dated Jan 7 2013
Production
The latest production information continues to indicate that the horizontal wells are settling into a long term decline rate of 15% per year, rather than the 25% previously expected. Approximately 50 wells have now been on production for 20 months or longer. The Company’s new presentation also states that the average IP rate for wells drilled in 2012 was 120 Bbl/d. We have partially incorporated this in our model (we have decreased the long term rate to 20%), and continue to use an average IP rate of 100 Bbl/d.
If subsequent data continues to confirm current trends, there are two important effects that result therefrom:
1) Actual production could exceed our forecasts significantly. For example, further decreasing the long term decline to 15% increases our estimates for 2013 and 2014 production to 17,050 and 18,770 Bbl/d, respectively.
2) Slower declines mean higher recoveries per well, meaning fewer wells needed to recover the reserves. In our last update, we had allowed for an additional 150 wells to produce the 256 MMBbl of 2P reserves in Patos Marinza (over and above the 780 wells previously contemplated), at a cost of $87 million (PV11), or $0.33 per share. (We have not removed any of these costs from our NAV calculations)