your prediction, page-26

Lots of theories... which one to pick...

the reward long term holders, nice theory but by the sounds of it institutions or savvy/slimy investors are getting the same deal so not sure i buy that benevolent act. And why now.. If JH thinks its going to be a hit he has enough money to do a few more holes and improve the price before he does his capital raising. Surely he wants to keep the number of new shares down under 2 billion.

second option knows his gotta get his money quick before investors catch up with him does not wash either. We have multiple duds, bad news etc while this may not be the success he expected it still was success that would have been followed up by surprise. So unless he has no faith at all in surprise he would wait a bit longer.

To me the timing is the most important thing about this announcement. JH has money to keep drilling, so why raise more money now. The only reason I could see is that he has something that he truely believes could go commercial, not necessarily this hole, so he wants to get money to commercialise it as fast as possible. Not sure if the weather up that way plays a part in his thinking or timetable. Waiting to surprise is drilled will take another month or two and hold up commercialisation, yes the price may go up a bit in that time but he looses a lot of time as well. Doing it this way JH gets his cash flow moving and he can move on with his drilling program to find additional fields to entice another JV partner.

While we are all hate to see more share sold, we have to remember the loss of our JV partners means we have most of the cake back. Another success or two and the next JV partners will be hopefully paying a lot more to get in.