$300m oil deal looks sealed, page-24

Stage 1, create a more immediate cash flow.

Step 2, undertake ucg in US, for test purposes of gas, and EOR for their own oil wells.

Step 3 trial plant US. a couple of years to GTL prodn.

Step 4, creation of GTL modularised plants 100% owned, plus JVs and sales plus royalty and tech assistance spread over the continents.

Whilst this is the main game, on the side you have a lot of other projects, including gas, oil, further tenement sales, or possible use of the above ground technology of gasification, power, and who knows what else PB may come up with.

I feel his diversion to this new purchase, knowing how tight a negotiator and deal maker he is, at a three figures price should be an income earner now. He has never spent anything like that before. It would appear the policy is spend the money now and grow quicker to finance the other projects. Of course, when a lot of his deals were done in the past, he was ahead of the pack, so any increased costs of acquiring similar type assets only means our assets also would be worth more now. For example deep or remote coal fields, or distressed oil fields that previously did not have much potential till EOR.

My thoughts last year was the tenement sales would give us the working cap and finance the first csg/gtl plant. I now see the company moving quicker to multi income streams, multi projects and locations, and quicker. So the latest announcement could be a game changer seeing LNC becoming profitable and re-rated with a PE figure sooner than previously thought.

I look forward to the details of the announcement.