future profits, page-27

Oh it'll drill. Something is (nearly) always better than nothing. It's just like I said though - it's slow, and it's expensive. It's a question of efficiency. The initial outlay is smaller, but the ongoing costs in terms of slower meterage, breakdown time, extra standby for geologists and loggers, extra accommodation and food for EVERYBODY involved when the drilling schedule runs late, etc etc etc...

The difference I was suggesting here is that Linc's slower rig is not really suitable for drilling beyond 200m, and definitely not suitable for coring at that depth, or anywhere there is significant groundwater, or anywhere remote where the crew needs to ship in new parts every week. What it is good for (or at least, what it would be good for if it were in good condition) is drilling large numbers of shallow holes, to less than 100m. Since UCG can only START at about 120m, every hole they drill is going to be deeper than that. Most will end up over 200m deep. Likewise with most coking coal deposits. I haven't seen any drill data from their Emerald tenement but I will be watching it with interest.

>> Is it possible he did get a new rig?

Definitely not. I can tell you with 100% certainty it was not a new rig.

>>didn't the viet govt invest $5m in Linc? maybe if they want Linc to be successful they can JV on their Qld coal, drill and JORC it "fully"- which is what your post seems to suggest.

Yes, JVs are done sometimes on coal drilling programs. This particular situation mightn't be a very good one for a JV because the risk is pretty high, considering that it's a sideshow to the main event, so to speak. There's no guarantee that Linc will get a saleable resource out of this deposit. And I don't think Linc is short of the money - they could put on more rigs if they wanted to. I think you're slightly misunderstanding my point - I'm just saying that Linc didn't go about this in the most efficient way. Efficiency is, obviously, one of the key aims of business. They can always buy more rigs, or better rigs, or JV, or hire, but the fact remains they probably made an error in the purchase of their original rig and have suffered in efficiency because of it.


>>Or are we just saying that the best way to fund a 20,000 bd plant is to sell coal and the best way to do that is buy a good rig...to which i could agree sounds good to me.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. A good rig would get that coal proved up much faster, and thus sold much faster. I think we can all agree that that could only be a good thing for Linc. As I said, there are other options to speed things up - they could buy another rig, or they could hire rigs. But those options are more expensive and much time has already been lost.

It's my personal opinion that they should have bought something like a UDR650 - top-head drive, with a mud pump, a decent, large air compressor, HQ capable, with PCD, and in a good state of repair. It would have blitzed through the holes on their Chinchilla site, especially the coring, and then it would be available to drill anywhere else.

But this is all getting a bit out of hand - I was never saying that Linc's rig is useless, or that they'd be better with no rig. I was just pointing out that the rig they did buy was not the most suitable for their needs. Not by a long way. But it's been blown a bit out of proportion. I'm a firm believer in Linc's potential, and I have the utmost respect for Peter Bond and his crew, they're doing amazing work.

I just believe they made an error in the purchase of their rig and that they should fix this error in one of the ways I mentioned above (if they haven't already), in order to speed up the proving of a JORC resource on their Emerald tenement.

Incidentally the first rig they put on at Chinchilla, before they bought their own rig, was way TOO big. It was a huge thing. I can still see the look on the driller's face when I told him we were only drilling to 200m. :) I'd estimate his rig was good for maybe 1500m.