our neighbour ready to drill!!, page-16

Baggins

Cuadrilla have approval to drill because they have been working on getting it for 3 or 4 years. They are the Original UK Shale firm. The guys that started Cuadrilla spent years in the US Shale industry and came to the UK in 2007 or 2008 specifically for Shale. They picked up their acreage for $NIL and have been working on getting approvals and doing work ever since.

Contrary to popular opinion Lord John Browne and Riverstone are a relatively recent addition to the Cuadrilla camp.

DTE was chasing CBM until recently when they changed strategy. Hence they have done little work on Shale yet. That is why they are not drilling yet.

PPot

I agree with your views in that I think shareholders interests will be best served via a sit and wait approach. Let Cuadrilla do more work, and assuming it is successful, Dart will benefit for zero cost. Drill the odd cheap CBM well and pull together low cost info for shale and plan a well considered strategy of how to develop their shale holdings.

Airth presents short term upside and cash-flow. In the meantime they need to control costs and chip away at selling small scattered assets to generate cash.

Shale in the UK is something that will unfold over the next 2 to 5 years. This is not the time to be in a big hurry on their shale assets IMO.

Disclosure; I hold AJL (which owns a big chunk of Bowland & Cuadrilla) & DTE