The Oil Man: Oil price, Pantheon Resources

WTI $45.77 -$1.15, Brent $48.06 -$1.24, Diff -$2.29 -22c, NG $2.97 -7c

Brent was never going to hold over 50 bucks, not this time anyway as predicted last week. A run up during the week had the air taken out of it Friday when it became clear late on that deeper production cuts were not on the agenda for Monday's meeting in St Petersburg.

Indeed it seemed that the hosts were concentrating on two things: adherence to the quotas and bringing Libya and Nigeria into the agreement, neither of which I would bet the farm on, yet.

As I said, Friday had started well and with Baker Hughes announcing that the rig count was down two overall at 950 and down one in oil at 764, the tone was set. But negative news came from Petro-Logistics who claimed that Opec production was rising which also punctured the balloon.

WTI ended down 77 cents on the week and Brent was off 85 cents and, whilst crude was up today in early trading, it has lost all that and is down around 20 cents as I write.

Pantheon Resources

An operational update this morning from Pantheon Resources as the company gets back into investors' good books with some helpful information from East Texas.

At VOBM#2H a frac date has been announced for 'around 4 August' as a contract has been signed in order to remediate the damage after the fateful experiment to horizontally drill and deviate the well.

The company say that this process will take two to three weeks on a trouble-free basis; I would have thought that is plenty of time, so we can expect results by the end of the month.

At VOBM#4, PANR has signed an agreement with Energy Drilling Co for the side-track at Tyler County and mobilisation is expected to commence in the last week in August. The guidance time-wise for this process is +/- 30-40 days so we can expect a prognosis by early October.

Response from the market place was unsurprisingly muted this morning. Investors have long memories and there are still a number of non-believers in this story after its many IR disasters.

However, the news coming from East Texas is getting better and the next three months should sort out these two well malfunctions and get the gas processing facility up and running on the 1 and 3 wells.

This will produce much needed revenue and alleviate worries about short-term funding. I remain, just about, a believer in the Pantheon story. After all that has gone on this is no time to jump ship.

And finally…

With my two favourite writers at the Financial Ttimes having now gone, I mean of course Jonathan Guthrie and Lucy Kellaway (whom I first met with the late Roland Shaw for those old enough to remember), one wonders whether to maintain a subscription any more.

Andrew Ward is doing a great job so I will carry on and enjoy reading his work, which is regrettably not often enough.

Yesterday at Lords, the England women's cricket team pulled off an unlikely victory. It had looked like they had not scored enough runs and India were slowly getting to their target until Anya Shrubsole came back on. Five wickets later, making 6-46, the cup was England's...

The England women were playing footy last night and won 2-0 against Spain after a match full of excitement and funny decisions by the ref. England, denied a second, good goal early on then had a pen awarded against them which was then rescinded after words from above…I also forgot to mention England's first game when they beat Scotland 6-0 last week.

The Open Championship was won by Jordan Spieth who got out of jail after a poor front nine yesterday nearly let in Matt Kuchar. In the end he blistered the back nine and won by three shots.

And Chris Froome, who we know isn't quite Sir Bradley in the eyes of the British public won his fourth Tour de France and could easily go again.

The pre-season friendlies continue, in Beijing Chelski beat the Gooners 3-0 and in the US the Red Devils beat Real Madrid on pens. They play Barca on Wednesday night.

This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.