calm heads required...

All,

Today's just another day, albeit a bl**dy sh*tty one at that. With our only producing assets in the controlling hands of an incapable bunch of useless bast*rds, the market is judging us based on what that yankie cowboy is telling them.

Do we really think that Chinguetti will be written off completely? I think not (think of all those appraisal results from Chinguetti wells). The northern section only contains 25% of the total reserve, which is 30MBO, or 5.7MBO to Hardman. Fair enough, given that CHinguetti accounts for all of us 2P reserves, it also means that our 2P reserves drops by 25% - ASSUMING the reserve will be revised downwards.

I know that I have been a strong supporter of Potter, rightly or wrongly, but I don't think we can blame him on this one. The topic of reserves is very subjective - and can differ greatly between different parties on the same set of data. Looking at the broker reports, ABN thinks there'll be downgrade, ML and JPM don't think so. Similarly, Woodies think there's a chance, Hardman doesn't (well, not yet anyway). It takes a lot of work to get resource into the 2P category, and it won't disappear just like that. Chinguetti is still in the commissioning stage of the project life cycle, and this is just one of those hiccups.

I'm still off the opinion (rightly or wrongly) that the market has over-reacted to CHinguetti news. Looking on the other side of the coin, what other bad news is left in this stock that the market hasn't priced in? All of us knew this was coming (maybe not Voelte's criticism of his own people - which reflects badly on us since our sole producing assets is relying on them!), but if you write down the potentially good vs potentially bad, how does the ledger look?

I won't issue advice on buy or sell, like some id1ots on this board who only come along to issue stupid statements like '$1 here we come' and who need to get a life, you can decide for yourself whether this stock is cheap or not. One of us maybe wrong, but collectively, are we all wrong? I doubt it... there's enough rationality on this board to argue both side of the argument.

Whatever you decide, keep a calm head. Don't trade on emotion, it's often a recipe for disaster - just like how I sold WPL at $36 out of spite more than anything else :( At least wait till the qtr report is out so that you can make a more informed decision. (KA, sad to hear you're bailing out mate)

Cool heads guys, cool heads...

618