crucial fact, page-54

Everest,

Didn't AUT go into massive debt funding their drilling ontop of JV?

I have yet to see your 'experience' in action.

1.They have always had a high success rate in drilling the known proven reserves. The instance of lower success rate was drilling exploratory wells into the hetlime formations to further extend reserves. This has been explained time and time again...

2. Most farm ins, as an experienced investor, give up a lot more than 33% of the profit too. Most I've seen are around 60-75% going to the project funder.

There are two key differences here though that I can see:

1. MAD is still the operator
2. Gulf is simply paying

Thus the deal is more about MAD conserving capital. This is a different approach than most who go into huge debt to get production rates up then have years before making a profit.. however we won't know the full implications until the deal is more mature.

For instance, if these wells go longer than Gulf expect, MAD lose out and if they go shorter, MAD wins. We won't know until the time it happens unfortunately.

3. A lot of this entire thread and posts are mere speculation. Very few on the positive or negative side of the fence have presented a reasonable data collection to support their claims.

4. Does it matter if Marathon acquired the farm in directly or if they acquired it from another company that acquired it? The end result is the same.

5. AUT and MAD have two different fields. AUT was far more capital intensive but also had a higher flow rate per well. The advantage of this, is that they could pour money in and get quick easy results of production increases.

Unfortunately this wouldn't work for the MAD field because if they poured money in getting contractor rigs and personel for a far higher cost than their own, with less experience, then not only will costs blow-out but safety and efficiency of the operation will also fall, adding to the cost pain.

If you are going to compare MAD with another company, atleast compare a similar field type...