RE:NCIB Operations Go-Time!Spot on arnolddiver.
Last nights news is what we've been waiting for.
Reading between the lines, I have exactly the same view.
Winter drilling season coming to an end - translation - break up is about to start, so very little expenditure combined with lots of cash inflow for 3 ish months, starting soon..
I don't know what their free cash flow is right now (ie amount in excess of the 65 million liquidity they must maintain pursuant to their bond agreements). However I think its reasonable to say he has access to $25 million right now.
They can buy about 82,000 shares per day pursant to the buy back rules (plus a few blocks).
At the presentation on March 8/23, the CEO said he would be aggressive at buying shares if he had the cash do to so and the share price were at current levels (C$10 at that time). I take that to mean they will buy all they can to at least C$10
Some quick math - at $10 per share and 82,000 shares per day, $25 million is enough to buy every day for 30 days (6 trading weeks).
6 weeks from now will be early May.
By early May OBE will be well into break up, and will be highly cash flow positive each day (very little expenditure during break up, combined with revenue from sales)
ie, by the time this $25 million is spent, OBE will be generating plenty more liquidity to allow the buy back to continue.
Q2 will be a combination of paying down accounts payable and buying back shares.
The buyback probably starts today.
This timing could not be better.
As for oil itself, about 600-800,000 boe/day of US refinery maintenance is expected to be finished in the first two weeks of April - ie a lot of oil consumption is about to come back online. With an additional 400,000 ish coming online by the end of May. In my view, that will make a significant difference to the US weekly EIA numbers (ie 1.2 million more boe/day oil consumption in the US, is a weekly additional draw of about 8.4 million barrels).
Alternatively you can view it as 1.2 million barrels/day that current buyers like China are going to have to get elsewhere - ie they will have to pay up for.
For those wondering about the refinery data, it comes from the following report dated Jan 18/23. It may be off a bit, but it won't be off by much. The link is here
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/heavy-slate-us-oil-refinery-overhauls-crimp-fuel-output-2023-01-18/
We also have the gasbuddy near real time data indicating weekly gasoline consumption in the US increasing in the 3-4% range.