Ann: Alameda-3 Drilling Update, page-313

Getting back to my original question, given a choice of drilling a 3km well in tiger country or a couple of shallow, easy horizontal wells into 1b for production what would you choose?.Duncan preffered the latter, as do I and did before with Zapato vs Al2. We have spent a great deal of money and 8 months to drill Al3. 2 month’s downtime waiting for a separator, euphemistically called rig maintenance, and 6 months drilling.
I see a pattern of needless risk and needless delay and I see it as emanating from AP. Looking at 2 WA entrepreneurs, Alan Bond, bombastic risk taker and Robert Holmes A Court, methodical thorough yet incisive I class AP in the Bond camp. The damage done to the company is such that I don’t see any significant turnaround in the SP irrespective of the drill results. McDaniels 3 month delay won’t help either. TBC