drilling?, page-2

Sir Senor,

Last week, Burnside-ST1 was currently at 3849m & is getting closer to the target in WA-281P in the Browse. Besides, Karoon's Kontiki & Shell's current drilling program at its Prelude field just north of Ichthys field, this may well b a crucial discovery. Proposed TD is 4200m, so should b a few interesting couple of weeks, should they encounter a HC column here. Initial estimates are for 100-500 mmbbls.

That episode with the sidetrack at 2370m did cause some unwanted delays, since spudding in mid June, but for now its behind them & its all steady drilling to TD. Partners are Chevron (24.8%), Inpex (20%) & Beach (7.34%) with Santos (47.83%)

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Besides the above, the excitement is more so for activity around 1st Sept, rumours on the internationals who've been in their dataroom etc. The media have quoted Shell, CNOOC, BP, Apache, AGL & Petronas were trolling thro' STO's dataroom, so lets hope it comes off, in 1 clean swift swoop by the predator/s!!

With 2P reserves of 1.013 BBboe & a mkt cap of A$12b, the multiple is about A$11.89/boe

Which is well within reach for any one of these majors. Afterall, its a known fact that CNOOC made a US$18.5b bid for UNOCAL, only 2b snubbed by Dubya back in 2005, b4 UNOCAL was snapped up by Chevron.

So who knows where SANTOS will end up. A stronger POO is an added plus to this saga come spring time.

Might buy some nxt week.

cheers