The Oil Man: Bowleven, Igas, Egdon, SOCO

WTI $45.81 +$2.49, Brent $46.95 +$2.52, Diff -$1.14 +3c, NG $2.71 -4c

The OPEC machine decided that enough was enough and some serious plugging was needed for the "agreement" at the 30 November meeting.

Secretary General Barkando has been sent on a tour of friendly and not-so-friendly member states and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia oil minister is to attend the energy forum in Doha, where he will meet OPEC and non-OPEC delegates to try and get the message across.

With Nigerian production down - due to terrorist action in the southern Niger Delta becoming more aggressive - markets took the opportunity to bounce by 6%.

After hours, the news wasn't so good: the American Petroleum Institute inventory data showed a build of 3.6 million barrels of crude against the whisper of +1.5 million.

IGas/Egdon

Yesterday it was announced that the Springs Road site had been given the go-ahead by Nottinghamshire County Council for two exploration wells, one vertical, one horizontal.

For both companies, this is good news; let's just hope it comes in time for IGas which is having its own "cash flow" crisis at the moment.

Egdon has subsequently announced that it has picked up a further 12.5% stake in PEDL 201 from Corfe for £50/-in shares.

SOCO

Only a few days after its recent update, SOCO has announced that the China National Petroleum Corporation has delayed by "at least" 30 days the payment of $52.7 million (£42.4 million) due following the 2005 sale of its Mongolian assets.

There is another detailed operational update, which is surely superfluous given how recently the company updated the market, and the company has a strong balance sheet despite this payment delay.

Sundry

Bowleven announced yesterday that Crown Ocean Capital or "COC" had attempted to put a resolution to the upcoming AGM to remove three non-executive directors and replace them with their own. COC owns around 7.8% of BLVN stock.

The paperwork was apparently invalid, but could be resubmitted. Today the company has announced that the deadline has passed and no new such resolutions have been received - how strange...

And Seacrest Capital has splashed out $250/- on behalf of Azeire to buy 3D seismic data from Antrim Ireland. Apparently the database is complimentary, so probably worth the money, but it does show how spectacularly Antrim have fallen from grace.

And finally…

The friendly last night at Wembley between England and Spain was actually quite competitive and, after a couple of acts of generosity, the ref had to make use of his cards a fair bit as tackles got fiercer.

With England leading two-nil and five minutes to go, it was a salutary lesson as Spain scored twice to get the draw. The only question now is when - and not if - Gareth Southgate gets the call from the FA, after which his beginner's luck will surely leave him…

And in the FA Cup replays last night, the giant-killing was done by Eastleigh, who went to Swindon and won three-one. Another great success for Swindon director of football Tim Sherwood…

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