The common Bond and Cooper happenings can be traced through the classic novel and film, Goldfinger, and the enduring quote from arch-villain, Auric Goldfinger, "the man with the Midas touch", that: “Once is happenstance. Twice coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
Cooper, after a surprise announcement last Friday on troubles at an Indian offshore gas construction project, finds himself at the second level of the Goldfinger warning – coincidence.
His first Bond experience, happenstance, can be assigned to the equally troubled BassGas project, which was the subject of a stock exchange report four days earlier.
Cooper will have his fingers crossed that there isn’t a third, though it’s a reasonable guess that he is starting to suspect enemy action given the run of bad news that has dogged Clough over the past few years.
For Slugcatcher, the Indian announcement came as somewhat of a shock, not because he wasn’t aware that events over there had become a little complex, but because until then his look at Clough was very much focused on the BassGas dispute and finding an answer to this simple question: who won?
At first blush or, more accurately, at the reading of the first press release issued on an arbitrators findings into the BassGas dispute, it appeared that Clough was rather happy – “the parties have agreed to meet for discussions” and “no amendment is currently required” to Clough’s financial position.
But at the second blush or, more accurately, at the reading of the second press release on the arbitrators findings, it appeared that Origin Energy (and partners) were the happy ones.
Slugcatcher, as is often the case, was simply confused.
The timing of the stock exchange statements is, however, almost as interesting as their content. Clough, according to the times Slugcatcher has seen, lodged its version of events at 9.27am on June 4. The BassGas joint venture replied at 9.56am saying, bluntly, that the arbitration process had been determined “in favour of the joint venture”.
If that had been the end of events for Clough, it was possible to say that here was another example of a legal finding having many interpretations.
But on Friday (at 10.46am) came the Indian announcement, which is different in many ways to BassGas – but similar in others.
India, known as the G1 project, also involves a dispute with a customer, termination of the contract, an attempted call on bank guarantees, and a few harsh words, such as these from Cooper about an Indian attempt to draw on the guarantee as “an aggressive effort to force Clough to accept a more disadvantageous solution in light of their continued failures on the project”.
It is stating the obvious to say that the last thing Cooper needs is a third project in the same category as BassGas and G1.
It’s probably also the last thing investors need. Over the past few weeks, the Clough share price has been under pressure, dropping from 64c on May 18 to trade as low as 50c on Friday, before closing for the weekend at 52c – down 18.7% over 16 trading days.
Unravelling precisely what’s happening at BassGas, and now G1, is proving too much for Slugcatcher – and perhaps even too much for a real-life James Bond.
But one matter is certain. The last thing Cooper needs now is a third problem contract on his desk because then it really would look like enemy actio
