Andante - yep, he confirmed this in his latest comments in mid-May but to be fair he has been saying this for about 18 months odd. At one stage he even employed a consultancy to manage the process. My guess is that negotiations are at an advanced stage - obviously Troy will now wait for a Bianchi result and this will influence the Zola price a great deal. Re. Tallaganda and WA351P, I can only guess that the price has not been tempting enough yet to get the deal over the line. I would think that BHP would be the only likely buyer, as who would want to be a junior partner to them ? . After all TAP waited nearly 9 months to get a result from Tallaganda ! I would want at least $50 mill for WA351P lease (and this seems reasonable given lease sales before any drilling). Must be worth more than those deals now that they know it is "gassy" ! A decent sniff of gas at Bianchi would also mean that this was $50 mill'ish.
Add in the cash and John Brooke's gas contract and the market cap is well and truly covered without Manora and the other assets.
I really hope that they don't effectively GIVE them away as we are not desperate for cash and as I said before, it is not a sellers market atm !
TAP Price at posting:
49.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held