UK 20:06 Saturday, 17 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I own shares in one or more of the stocks mentioned. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
The time to buy AIM oil shares is when nothing seems to be happening, especially if you’re taking a longer term view and not just looking for a quick buck. Xcite Energy (XEL) is certainly a company that applies to and you could be forgiven for thinking that it is trying to bore its investors into submission, given the rate of progress being made.
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Comments
bobby c
Hi Gary
From reading the post you made and comparing it against the opening disclosure there seems to be a clash; you have said you do have a position in XEL so the disclosure appears incorrect. Could you please confirm?
Tom Winnifrith
Editor error not that of Gary. I have corrected
T
Steve
I’m still on the sidelines with Xcite. $700million is needed in funding before first oil and although the article says they are looking for a farm out, their most recent significant announcement basically said that they had not been able to find a farm out partner so instead were looking at working with the equipment suppliers to share the finance costs. Since then there have been MOUs but no firm news.
Until that funding is in place its difficult to see how much of the field Xcite will be left with or how many shares will be in issue.
It may well be I miss out on a substantial gain here, but the amount required is so significant I struggle to see too much long term value.
dsh
I agree with a lot of what you say Steve, but it seems clear that they are very busy behind the scenes getting their FDP approval sorted. Rupert Cole said at the AGM that the FDP approval would be the key to shareholder value not first oil.
Now we just await what Rupert means by this.
This stock has already taken such a beating and over such a long period of time now it’s hard to believe that it can go much lower, but then I thought that when it was just over 100p.
I’m happy enough to keep my investment with XEL for now but will be relieved when we finally get a firm plan one way or the other.
Gary Newman
Steve/DSH, I still believe that there will be a tie up with Statoil, given that they withdrew their FDP for Bressay and also purchased data from XEL. Maybe whatever deal is reached won’t be called a ‘farm out’ but suspect that it will work in a similar way and would solve the funding issues, especially if it was based on development costs being offset against future production, or similar. Problem for a lot of these larger AIM oil companies at this stage is the amount of money they need to take things forwards and into production (loads of examples around amongst the popular ones – PVR, BLVN etc). The problem is that they can’t go it alone due to the amounts required, and recently there haven’t been that many farm out deals – and often not on good terms for the smaller company when there has been one. But it also comes down to if the asset is proven as commercial, then there is no way that it won’t ultimately be developed. It also doesn’t help that most of us are far too impatient and set our expectations to levels that are unlikely to be reached (both in terms of SP and how quickly things will happen – BODs don’t help themselves either by setting their own unrealistic timescales).
Gary Newman
Bobby C, Sorry for the delayed reply, have been out most of last week. Tom has already answered, but basically a different disclaimer was used to the one that I’d put over with the piece and has now been changed. Just to clarify – I was holding before this piece was published as see low 60s to be a good area to be buying, given support around here. It could of course slip lower on a lack of any news, but weighing that up against the chance that things could start to progress, I’m happy to take a risk at these levels.