This Could Be The Most Exciting Natural Gas Play in Europe

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LONDON, February 29, 2024  /PRNewswire/ -- Supergiants like Exxon are focused on big offshore venues like Guyana and Namibia, leaving behind prime onshore natural gas assets in Europe - a region that is now desperate for affordable domestic resources that Russian Gazprom doesn't control.  Companies mentioned in this release include:  Chevron (NYSE:CVX), ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP), Talos Energy (NYSE:TALO), Cheniere Energy (NYSE:LNG).

Germany, for example, is scrambling for gas, even if this winter's storage is nearly full. And unfortunately, it traded one form of dependence for another. In fact, at the height of the crisis, the European Union was paying some 40% more for U.S. LNG imports than it was for Russian piped gas. 

But there is a far cheaper domestic alternative, and it's found in assets abandoned by the supergiants off chasing bigger oil and gas dreams offshore.  What's too small for Exxon and others, could be of huge potential value to a company like MCF Energy (MCF.V; MCFNF.PK).

The Top People in the Industry for Europe's Energy Reset

The company is no stranger to Europe's energy industry. It was co-founded by oil and gas investor Ford Nicholson, who has a track record of developing billion-dollar international assets and offloading them to giants such as Exxon for top dollar. In total, Ford has exited around $4.5 billion in energy assets in Europe and Asia.

In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Nicholson launched an energy company in Kazakhstan that was sold in 2006 for approximately $1.6 billion. In 2004, he co-founded a company that developed Europe's largest heavy oilfield, in Albania (Bankers Petroleum Albania, Ltd) worth about $2.25 billion by 2011.

And he's looking to do it again today with MCF Energy (MCF.V; MCFNF.PK) in today's Europe, which is in the middle of an energy reset worth trillions of dollars--and the biggest near-term prize is natural gas. 

Key Assets Where Europe Needs It Most

The first drill, which will launch next week, is in Austria, at MCF Energy's Welchau prospect near the Austrian Alps. This prospect is analogous to large anticline structures discovered in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and the Italian Apennines. 

Welchau is adjacent to an up-dip from a discovery that intersected at a gas column of at least 400 meters, testing condensate rich for pipeline-quality gas. A national gas pipeline network is only 18 kilometers away, making for a short, cheap tie-in option for getting product to domestic markets. MCF will earn a 25% interest for exploration drill costs estimated and capped at 2.55 million euros.