Oh @Warnie... continuing your altruistic mission to save us all from big bad Dave Wall and the dark lord Basinski...
Firstly - as you well know - Dave had been in the job 1 month when giving this interview in 2014 - he had nothing to do with deciding to drill Morocco - that block was selected by the company way back in 2009!
And your combination of selective quoting words out of context to insinuate that Dave was somehow talking up the prospects of a successful OUTCOME from Morocco does you zero credit... seriously - did you even LISTEN to what he said??
At 1:25 in the video Dave said "the sub-surface DRILLING CONDITIONS are very well defined" - he was talking about how easy it should be to set up and drill the well - NOT that the play was well defined or in any way guaranteed to produce oil.
He goes on to say he was "confident based on the planning to date that GALP will deliver a high quality operational outcome for us on TAO-1"
In other words - he is referring to their confidence in GALP's ability to manage the drilling operations - NOT confidence that the well would produce oil".
"Operational outcome" just means that the well is drilled on time and on budget with no delays, setbacks or cost over-runs. (As it happened, there were cost overruns - however you can only make decisions and run a company with the information you have at the time - and at the time this interview was given, all planning to date indicated that the well would be an easy drill and cost overruns were unlikely).
Dave is a straight-shooter - and doesn't hype things up. He lays out the facts and uses words like "may" or "could" when he does not know. He doesn't make unrealistic promises.
e.g. "GALP... has completed a substantial amount of analysis that indicates that we MAY have very good porosity at our main objective"
The additional costs incurred at Morocco were under the management of GALP, the drill operator and could not reasonably have been foreseen at the time of this interview. Dave and the board had nonetheless prudently raised funds to de-risk this potential outcome - and were able to negotiate an exit with a contingent liability of AU$5M (or equivalent shares issued) to GALP triggered by market cap exceeding $50M (which is due in about 45 days time) - and YES Warnie, we can issue them some shares so we don't need to panic about having the cash.
Tangiers / 88E are an exploration company. TAO-1 was an EXPLORATION well - similar in purpose to Icewine.
Dave's slides (2:21) specifically rate the chance of success (COS) at 21% - and mention that Porosity is inferred to be good based on GALP's analysis (ie. they can't know until they drill).
Whereas with Icewine, Porosity is CONFIRMED to be "outstanding" (where have I heard that word before).
Ultimately, the very nature of exploration means that some prospects won't pan out. TAO-1 didn't.
Icewine has so far ticked all boxes - the results are practically off the charts! Which is not to say there are no risks remaining - just that it has progressed a LOT further and Chance of Success is now at or above 50%.
(20min delay)