its a waiting game ..., page-3

Green Iguana

I can answer some of those questions, but equally you could easily email the company and most likely have a reply within days.

I suspect UCG knowledge is tightly held and not easy to come by, if for no other reason that it is hard to to gain the practical experience of trial burns. Len is a geotechnical engineer and a PhD at that so I guess his knowledge is at least solid.

Perhaps Len knows enough to be a ucg "general practitioner" rather than a specialist, a good place to be if you are an MD with focus on commercialisation and all the practical issues of funding and regulatory approvals? Peter Bond of LNC seems full on marketing but I would be surprised if he is well across all the technical, regualtory and funding issues. I am not too familiar with the management team at CNX.

A geotechnical engineering background is pretty useful in getting across all aspects of an EIS ... cavity collapse, hydrogeology, contaminant containment, groundwater monitoring, yattta yatta. My enquiries suggest that CXY has put more effort into EIS work than perhaps the market might credit, simply because they are nearer term for full scale ucg production than some others. I would imagine that significant funds have been spend with Golder Associates these past few years at Kingaroy and that they would be very involved in the EIS process. On such issues you/anyone definitely need to satisfy yourselve(s) that this is/isn't the case though.

Why haven't Cougar done an earlier trial burn you ask? My thoughts are that this has something to do with the fact that Len and Blinderman (Ergo Exergy) ran the Chinchilla trial burn from 1999 to 2002. That burn was a technical success, but for whatever reasons did not lead to ucg approvals and commercialisaton at the time. I am betting the pragmatist has been biding his time for the past few years whilst ticking boxes to ensure there is reasonable chance of regulatory and funding approval in place extending way beyond the upcoming pre-production burn. Even to call it a pre-production burn rather than a trial burn shows a management exuding confidence imo

Commercial proving is thin on the ground anywhere with LNC, CNX and CXY ... but Chinchilla was a known large scale technical success ... Eskom is proceeding with Majuba (spelling?) in South Africa (albeit slowly) and a very confident Cougar/Ergo are launching straight into a commercial scale Kingaroy 200MW ... there is none of this tentative 5/20MW stuff.

I would feel more comfortable you making your own enquiries before buying than relying on any of my postings.

Cheers
Dex