just for interest, page-43

Extremely quiet times, even latest Top 20 only had ONE change. Number 2 dropped 105K, otherwise NIL movements.

In fact, the only tidbit that gave me a bit of a smile was on Page 4 of the March QR.
"A new contract for fracture stimulation and completion of the four wells in ATP 855 was awarded to Condor Energy Services Limited, a newly established Australian company with new equipment from North America. Condor personnel have experience both in the Cooper Basin and internationally."

I would like to think that this will be a very sound move, but, it is frankly quite disappointing that, at this late stage of development, we have to resort to a virtual unknown operator to undertake what should be the most significant work ever conducted by Icon, proving up APT855.

Now, I am not losing any sleep over this, as I have absolute confidence in the Icon and the Chevron teams working on this (please note that I omitted one of the partners which will remain unmentioned). But, clearly, the patience of Icon and CVX management with the previous drilling team has been totally exhausted by their obvious incompetence.

But, it strongly confirms what has been bugging me for months and which I have expressed here and certainly to ICN.
What has happened is a virtually unknown team has been hired for this work for one major reason, maybe not for the ability of the new team, although I am sure that ICN and CVX have grilled them to the nth degree, but, because the former team has so very badly stuffed up so many times that they have had to be sacked!
THAT is the fundamental message that is to be read in this decision. And, as we all know, and which I have pounded for months, is that that stuffing up has grossly distorted what analysts have based their analyses on.
And those analyses, by definition, are also distorted and have cost shareholders in both BPT and ICN very dearly indeed with the obvious resultant negative market sentiment that still exists.

We are frankly at ground zero for where Icon will be in 6 months time.
Our S.P. is a fraction of where the "potential" indicates it might otherwise be, but, with all of that uninspiring analysis that we have all read, and certainly by those who can move S.P.s, the S.P. currently is back in the basement and the only obvious catalyst to change that doesn't start for another 6 weeks.
THE punt now is strictly based upon what numbers come out of the 4 wells to be fracced and flow tested in APT855.

The market has pretty well written off what's in PEL218 from the absolute crap that was delivered there and clearly lead to that drilling team being sacked.
But, as stated in the QR, these tests in some of the wells will be restricted to specific sections and will NOT represent the full amount in those wells. So, there will need to be some "smart" reporting from our company's publicists as "some" anaysts will only look at the lead numbers when reporting those results.
And, clearly, we can only hope that the new drilling team doesn't stuff up either.

So, whichever way we look at it, this project continues to intrigue and tease, but, let's hope that we can rely on the old cliche that it can only get better.