Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Swindletop Forever!

In the early days of the oil industry, if you popped a gusher the fools would rush in with money. Drill a mess of ever poorer wells, to ever greater costs and descending returns.

Not all that much has changed. The cowboy spirit still rules.


Oh, sure, there's proper spacing, much better underground mapping, much higher costs, bigger stakes - - -OK, a lot has changed. But not the dynamic of people so anxious to get in they - well lets consider WHX . Whiting set up this trust as to raise some money by selling a definite amount of future production from a field to investors. They've been quite careful to always explain the terms of the deal in quarterly reporting. The dividend is now about $2.76/share. In 3 years or so, the contracted amount runs out, and the dividend stops. It's trading at $7.23 right now, which seems reasonable.

In Mid-July it was selling for $18. People were buying it to get a 12% yield - not even looking at the BIG BOLD PRINT that said when it would run out. A chap named Shane Blackmon blew the whistle. Pop! Shall we see how Shane was thanked?


The sole INTENT of this story is to create fear/panic selling, causing the stock price to COLLAPSE, allowing the author and anyone else who is in on this SCAM, to profit handsomely. This is at least the 3rd such article on WHX in the past 1.5 years, always 1 month before the stock goes ex-div. This author is DEVOID of integrity! This is sheer price MANIPULATION!
18 Jul, 11:56 AMReply
 
But most people came around pretty quickly.

That's the kind of silliness that can happen when the promoter is being honest? So when a company actively sets out to deceive?


I'm surprised there hasn't been more oil related scamming at the low level, but that may just show how enforcement is done these days. In the big picture, there is a constant flood of disinformation about energy independence, drilling on federal land, 3,000,000 new oilfield jobs, going back to being the worlds #1 producer, smiting the Saracens, and just about any other bogus claim that somebody finds it convenient to make. Chill, & visit theoildrum.com
 

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