While I don't disagree with the broad sentiment of frustration expressed by many I suspect that as time goes on we tend to forget some of the details and multiple events tend to blur into a single homogonous wait.
Could I point out that the PD2 well currently being tested didn't even spud until May 2012 and was still drilling in July. At best they have had 6 months to test this well which is a long way short of the "year" mentioned.
I know it feel like a year but there is a very good reason for this. It was this time last year that they were testing the PD#1 well and we were looking to understand which zone(s) of that well were producing that lovely oil that was flowing to the surface. Sadly they encourntered difficulties with that well which prevented that testing from being completed. From this however PD#2 and PD#3 were born in May.
Yes a little over six months later we have two new wells drilled, and they are a fair way through fracking and testing the large number of hydrocarbon bearing zones that it contains. I guess to some extent this is a key point. If drilling don't find any oil it takes no time at all to test it. If you are lucky enough to find a single oil bearing zone that doesn't take long either. When you drill through 6 separate HC zones it goes without saying that the length of time necessary to test them all is proportionately longer.
Yes the entire evaluation process is taking quite a while but we do need to remember that we had some bad luck which abruptly terminated the testing of the lower OB zones in PD#1 so there was slightly more complex analysis required on PD#2 to figure out there the best oil was coming from. Additionally additional deeper HC bearing sandstone zones were discovered deeper than expected which had to be evaluated before they could move up the hole and get to the zones determined in PD#1.
If this had all been done in half the time it wouold most likely have been because the news was bad. Like I said before, it doesn't take long to determine that you have no oil but it takes quite a while to test 5 or 6 complex zones of differing geology.
If this current testing provides good news then the time invested will surely have been well worth it. If not then it will have made little difference if we got the bad news 3 months ago or now because all we will be able to do it sit and wait for Vietnam excitment to give us a boost.
I wish you all the best of luck. Its possible that all this frustration will turn to euphoria almost overnight. I hope that is what we all get to experience in coming months.
NEN Price at posting:
25.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
