company owes s/hprogress announcement, page-5

Looking back to the most recent presentation on september 7 SDL have made some noticeable changeas to the timelines etc. Indeed it could be said that it is a result of feedback from "potential partners" I summarise as follows -

1. In the May presentation, reserve definition was expected to be completed before end of 2009. Now it is due SOMETIME in 2010. That is a 12 month window of time here. Hmmmm...
I guess the expectation was that a partner would be found by mid-09 and that the government would reimburse SDL 50% of the $90m-odd SDL has spent on exploration. Thus giving SDL ability to drill out further prospects. I dont think the $20m-ish they have in the bank will last more that 2 quarters if they drill hammer and tongs, like they did thru late 2008 early 2009 to prove up Mbarga. IMO, Meridional would be the better place to prove up over Nabeba. Atleast Meridional is in Cameroon and there would be no cross-border issues associated with transport, or issues of "which country makes the profit" - cameroon or congo?, etc, etc.

There is a BIG emphasis now on finding out what the reserve/potential of SDLs other holdings which was not there in the May timeline presentation. Was the belief that there was enought DSO to support signing up a potential investor? If so, is the "hole" in the resource category, as noted by Westcott, an issue for potential investors? It seems so.

2. BFS was to be complete by end of 2009, now a Feasibility Study will be submitted to the Govt in 2009 and the BFS finished sometime in 2010 (no clarity as to when in 2010 it would be finished). In my small world, I dont know the difference between a Feasibility Study and a BANKABLE Feasibilit Study. Can someone point out to me the difference between the 2?

3. There is a feeling of "no news is good news" by some poster here, but management is just not scoring the runs at this moment nor over the last 6 months. Good news means announcements to the market. No accouncements means either no news (obviously), or bad news which needs remedial action. Hence the significant delay in the timetable as presented to shareholder in the last 12 months.

We have good names on the board, I agree, but I rate SDLs first innings (215mt of DSO and 2325Mt of IT) to be a only a good score. Somewhere along the way, the volumes and ultimately economics of the project, cant be stacking up for investors. It seems potential investors have batted well in their first innings and are forcing SDL to drill further to get more DSO.

Just looking at Meridional prospect in SDL's charts, there were substantially more 60%+ surface samples (purple spots) than even at Mbarga. I have hope that this will drill out very pleasing results.

If I equate SDL's drilling out of Meridional to be their 2nd innings, we had better hope that we have enough runs to see out 2010 without going back to market for another SPP, otherwise a 4 innings run chase might be easier to catch that we think.

4. As this IO venture is part of a much larger industrialisation of cameroon (aluminium etc), if there is 1 link in the chain which is not keeping up with the Govt of Cameroons timetable for this industrialisation, could SDL lose the preferred status of being the port developer? I would think there is escape clauses for the govt. Or further still lose control of EPL92?

The above is not an attempt to downramp, although some will interpret it to be so. I just dont feel that management is keeping us abreast of whats going on behind the scenes here. Rest assured things are going on behind the scenes but we are not hearing anything at all other than the usual blah blah blah stuff being trotted out in these presentations. Which basically say the same thing but with the timelines being pushed out time and time again.

FYI, I have a large-ish (OOTM) holding in SDL which was twice the size just after the announcement on Sep 7. I sold half my holdings and put money into GMR, DRK and NKP.

DYOR peoples....