Late last week, Victoria Petroleum put out a statement comparing the development records of Impress and Odin Energy, which is behind a second move to replace the VicPet board, unfavourably with that of VicPet's new major shareholder Queensland Gas Company.
Smith said this clearly implied that Impress was involved with his attempt in partnership with Geoff Gander and James Crawford to revamp the VicPet board.
"It's got nothing to do with Impress, whatever John [Kopcheff, Victoria Petroleum managing director] might say," Smith said.
"I'm acting in my own capacity as an investor. I'm not an executive of Impress; I'm just a humble chairman."
Smith is indeed chairman of Impress (not, as erroneously reported on PNN last week, its managing director) and is also a non-executive director of Australian Worldwide Exploration. But he is best known as a veteran resources investor.
Impress and VicPet are partners in the PEL 104 venture in the Cooper Basin, which recently brought the Growler oil field onstream, but Smith says as an investor he is more concerned with VicPet's other interests.
"The Victoria Petroleum Annual Report for 2007 required 25 pages to cover 42 assets in Australia and the USA," Smith and his colleagues say on their website www.vpechangecampaign.com.au
"Just imagine the amount of management and travel time that would be required to ensure VicPet interests were protected. It is impossible to see how a small company like VicPet or even one of the major companies would have sufficient management time to adequately service and extract value from all the assets."
Many of these assets appear to have little or no value to the company, and in some cases, incurred substantial permit commitments and liabilities, according to the website.
"A good example is the PEL 115 permit in the Cooper Basin which is held on a 100 percent equity basis by VicPet and which has a minimum permit obligation of five exploration wells estimated to cost over $10 million prior to November 2008.
"PEL 115 is acreage from which the balance of VicPet Joint Venture partners withdrew from in October 2007 seeing limited prospectivity."
Smith says if he and his colleagues are elected to the VicPet board, they would engage a special project team to review all the assets.
"The team would consist of both commercial and technical persons, and most importantly, with no emotional attachment to any of the assets and would be charged with disposal by sale or withdrawal from assets that are not key to the growth of the company," he said.
"Generally we believe our company will devolve to having two main areas of activity, the Cooper Basin, excluding PEL 115, and the Queensland coal methane gas interests.
"Once both areas are commercially developed they will attract the attention of major energy companies to farm into. The days of management time being expended on travel around the globe would cease, and their time would be only focused where the best return for shareholders can be generated."
But as noted earlier, Smith, Gander and Crawford are not the only group trying to remake VicPet's board. Recently listed Cooper Basin explorer Odin Energy also wants to put its own nominees on the board.
Odin's arguments about the need for change at VicPet are similar to Smith's, as are its proposals for a new direction - divestment of many assets and a concentration on the Cooper Basin and Queensland coal seam methane.
However, managing director Andrew Dimsey said there was another important element to the company's push.
"We believe we have to rework the exploration process in the Cooper Basin so that little companies can work together," he said.
"A lot of small companies have floundered a bit. VicPet works itself into the ground and keeps going back to raise more capital, but it can't get things done quickly.
"We want to see companies like Odin and VicPet combining technical teams and resources. If you can do that and you've got the acreage spread, you can achieve a lot more."
But Smith was scathing about Odin's push to change the board.
"I don't think Odin can add value to the company," he said, before referring PNN to the vpechangecampaign website.
"Odin's ‘Vision for Victoria Petroleum' so far looks like a slogan in search of a forward strategy," the website said.
"The company [Odin] appears to have no tangible assets and has entered into a very heavy commitment-orientated farm-in agreement with Blue Energy, who in turn has a farm-in agreement with Great Artesian Oil and Gas."
Smith was also derisory about Odin's plans for a new VicPet board.
Odin said its two nominated directors - Anthony Short and Alex Bajada - would serve alongside current VicPet managing director, John Kopcheff. But late last week, Kopcheff categorically ruled out serving on a board that included Short and Bajada.
"This decision only serves to further highlight what has clearly been a quick, superficial and poorly thought through strategy by Odin to get control of VicPet's assets through taking a minority stake funded by monies raised by Odin in their public offering in August/September 2007," the website said.
"These funds had been earmarked for Odin's own exploration strategy."
According to the vpechangecampaign website, Odin now has about 16.08% of VicPet shares. But Smith refused to say how many shares he and his colleagues now had in VicPet.
Meanwhile, Australia's largest specialist coal seam methane producer, Queensland Gas Company, has said its recent purchase of 7.13% of VicPet share is intended to show support for the junior's existing board and to protect QGC's joint venture interest in a permit that it holds in partnership with VicPet.
"VicPet is a joint venture partner with us in a licence north of our existing CSM acreage, so we are an interested party," QGC chief financial officer Ian Davies told the Australian.
However, given that QGC already holds 60% of the lease in question, it is hard to see how a change of the board at VicPet would threaten this JV.
