AUSTRALIAN OIL & GAS CORP

The end, stated plainly: the directors declared the company no longer had sufficient assets to meet any obligation arising after 30 June 2012, that it had ceased operations, and that they would file to terminate its SEC registration - which they did the same day. Not a bankruptcy and not a takeover; a company that simply ran out of money and said so.

listing compliance notice

AUSTRALIAN OIL & GAS CORP deregistered its securities, ending its obligation to file reports with the SEC.

listing compliance notice

Halved the Cornea stake again, from 17% to 8.5%, to raise A$1.59 million - and the buyer was Coldron, a private company of AOGC's own president Geoff Albers, with part of the money repaying another Albers company that had been funding AOGC. A year after the wells were drilled, A$769,193 was still owed to the joint venture operator. The company is now selling assets to its own controller to pay last year's bills.

asset acquisition disposition

The PTTEP sale settled and $4,244,679 came in - and went straight out again, covering most of AOGC's share of the Braveheart-1 and Cornea-3 drilling bills. Selling the one asset a major wanted is what paid for the two wells, and nothing was left over.

asset acquisition disposition

Cornea-3 was spudded on 11 December 2009 in Browse Basin permit WA-342-P using the Songa Venus rig, with AOGC holding 17%. The first of the two Browse wells the 2008 Gascorp farmout was designed to make possible.

drilling progress report

Agreed to sell its remaining 7.5% of the Oliver permit to Thailand's PTTEP, which was already buying out operator Stuart Petroleum's 50%. With the appraisal well costed at $30-40 million, AOGC took the cash rather than face cash calls it had no way of funding - and gave up the one discovery a major wanted.

asset acquisition disposition

The same trick in the Browse Basin: Gascorp earns 15% of permits WA-332-P, WA-333-P and WA-342-P by paying $1.12 million for 490 kilometres of new seismic and a drill site survey, cutting AOGC's interest from 20% to 17% and setting up a Braveheart-1 well for late 2009. Every stake the company holds is being diluted to get wells drilled with someone else's money.

asset acquisition disposition

Split its three Timor Sea permits into separate joint ventures and farmed out the best one: Stuart Petroleum takes 50% and operatorship of AC/P33, home to the Oliver oil and gas accumulation, halving AOGC's stake to 7.5% in exchange for paying the whole cost of an appraisal well, the engineering work to a development decision, and the first $25 million of development spending. A cashless way for a company with no revenue to get its best prospect drilled.

asset acquisition disposition

The SEC objected to how the April 2006 purchases of Alpha and Nations had been booked - because both had been under common control with AOGC, the accounting had to be redone - so the 2006 annual accounts and the first two quarters of 2007 could no longer be relied on. The related-party structure of the founding acquisition catching up with the company two years later.

financial restatement

Acquired its entire asset base in a single day: two Australian private companies, Nations Natural Gas and Alpha Oil & Natural Gas, bringing a 30% share of four Timor Sea permits (NT/P62 to NT/P65) and a 20% share of three Browse Basin permits, paid for with 4.1 million shares and A$150,000. Both were sold by entities in which AOGC's own director Geoff Albers was a director and shareholder - this is a US-listed wrapper around Albers's private Australian exploration interests.

asset acquisition disposition

KPMG resigned with immediate effect because the company no longer had any Canadian operations left, and the replacement auditor was engaged not by the board but by Geoffrey Albers - an outsider buying control through a plan of reorganization then before the US bankruptcy court. The company is in bankruptcy, and this is the first appearance of the man who takes it over and turns it into Australian Oil & Gas.

auditor change

Under its former identity as Synergy Technologies Corporation of Colorado, the company dismissed auditor Hansen, Barnett & Maxwell, whose reports on both 1998 and 1999 had raised substantial doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. No disagreement over the accounting - but the going-concern warning is the first recorded sign of the trouble ahead.

auditor change