12,000 acres at NSA and east makes Neons original NSA acreage somewhat miniscule at 284.
Looking over well records from DOGGR it appears there were very few wells drilled in the east area in the past, even at shallow depths typical of the San Ardo area.
As we are discovering across California there are several new plays at depth. Perhaps this is what Neon is looking at here.
Given the geographic extent of the Monterey formations we maybe looking at yet another large oil/gas shale play in the 9000-14000ft depth range.
Given the number of articles reporting shale sales in recent times this can't be a bad thing for Neon to have picked up.
Exxon Mobii have just taken out a Baken player for a swap of assets plus $1.6B. Exxon are trying to expand their reserves and production os seem to be on something of a mission over shale.
Shell did a deal last week for $1.9B.
Heres a couple of recent Rigzone articles on US shale oil/gas: