question for the board.?, page-2

I think that they need time to integrate all the new data from P-1 before deciding where to drill the first appraisal well. Nothing more than that. Kontiki is a different prospect and is independant of the P-1 result so no problem with going straight there. As interested investors, we would like to see rapid appraisal programmes with high gas flows on testing and lots of press but the Karoon & Conoco appproach is very prudent. Each well is expensive, so they will want to find out what is at Poseidon with as few appraisal wells as possible. Right now, they have a discovery well, wireline logs showing where they interpret gas-bearing sands and a gas column confirmed by pressure measurements. They also sampled the gas but couldn't recover the sample. However, they have some simple analyses made during sampling that will have confirmed the nature of the sampled fluid ie gas - but no composition so no information on condensate content or CO2. They will also have information from how the fomation behaved when pressure tests were made and the sample taken, that will tell them how permeable the rocks are (but only where those samples were taken). It's a long way from a production test but it will have been enough for each company to quietly file this as a discovery. Still quite a few unknowns but the champagne corks will have been popping.

One impact of the P-1 drilling on K-1 will probably be in the design of the well. The 6" hole size at target created all kinds of problems, so my guess is that we will see this well engineered to drill the target in a larger diameter hole size - probably 8.5"