Ann: Quarterly Activities and Cashflow, page-13

From Cath's report:

Noteworthy is that Woodside announced a US$400m increase in the CAPEX for the Sangomar field development, largely due to COVID19 related delays and that one year from FID, the project is 24% complete. Cost blow outs such as this and early on in the development would have been problematic for FAR if we had remained in the development, even if COVID and the oil price rout had not occurred.

And there we have the admission of the atrocious management of our 'little gold mine'. Even cost blowouts would have rendered FAR's participation 'problematic'. For goodness sake, has there ever been an oil development that has not run overbudget? And yet FAR did not factor in that possibility - we were geared to the last dollar, apparently. Actually even that's not true, because we still had a significant funding shortfall to make up even on Woodside's original numbers.

Woodside with its hefty balance sheet has played our amateurs on a break. What a pity we didn't get taken out - at least we'd have limped away with a couple of cents ... but even dodgy private equity firms found the stench of this carcass too much.

I guess that having elected not to do the honorable thing, 'the same team that brought you Sangomar' has to put a glossy spin on the current situation, but I found the tone of this report nauseating. Not a sniff of contrition and only the inadvertent admission of incompetence I pointed out above. Shameful.

OOO