questions for the sydney meeting , page-2

H,

Re: “HDR needs more near-term production."

Agree, but the cost would be very high these days given the PoOil. The next best thing is to get assets similar to what many companies have in the US (PSA or AMU):
Low risk, small pools (i.e. don’t attract the medium or large players), low exploration cost and fast linkage into production.

Given the perhaps late start to get into the US market, I think Suriname is following this strategy.


Re: “HDR could be seen as becoming over-stretched with so many projects in far flung regions....particularly greenfield areas.” Why do we need to add more areas

Agree, but a significant land holding possibly adds to takeover potential. Many of the medium/large companies have left their land grab run too late.


Re “... as opposed to concentrating on speeding up exploration and particularly development in the current areas of activity???”

Oil exploration is a totally different situation to minerals, so it is hard for me to generalise. So I am not sure if additional ground is slowing down other projects; they seem to have the cash. Depends on how things are being run and they may be using local geos and crews to do much of the work. Contractors do much of the geophysics including processing and possibly the interpretation – they could be busy and slow things a bit.

Re: “With Tiof and perhaps Tevet and Banda developments coming up don't we need to retain more of our cashflow and capital to meet our obligations in these projects?”

Hopefully they will have Ching up and running again before that and the $ flowing.

The low output from Ching must have shocked the govt a bit. I remember their comment that they hope to be producing 4x the current amount of oil soon.

I do have questions

What is the impact of Ugandan “waxy oil” on
flow testing
production infrastructure and costs
and on refining ?


G