Canada's Falcon Oil and Gas reports that there is a 90% probability that its Mako concession (Southern Hungary), has a recoverable gas resource of 21.8 trillion cubic feet (617 billion cubic meter or some 4 billion barrels of oil equivalent), Interfax reports. The resource assessment, based on probabilistically estimated recoverable fractions of known but inactive quantities, also states that there is a 50% probability of a recoverable gas resource of 54.9 Tcf, and a 10% chance of 116.1 Tcf at Mako. Falcon says that The recoverable portion of this 'Contingent Resource' will be determined through well testing and longer term production testing.
Our view: We have significant doubts about the size of the reserves. 617bcm equals to Hungary's 40 years total gas consumption, and indicates a sizable field even in international terms. We suspect that the economically recoverable portion of this contingent resource could be much smaller than 600bcm, however, we also note that even one single percent of this reserve is a significant amount. We believe that the news is positive for MOL for three reasons: 1) it indicates that neighbouring fields of the Hungarian company might also contain more than expected natural gas, 2) once Falcon starts gas production it should use MOL's transportation infrastructure, which could significantly add to transmission revenues and 3) Falcon's new production would be subject to mining fees, which could help MOL in filling up the gas subsidy budget. This could lower the pressure on the Hungarian government to increase the mining fees (per cubic meter of gas produced). Although it is hard to quantify these impacts, we can imagine that investors pick up MOL share price today on the news.