Ann: Chairman's letter with SPP and NOM, page-85

Picture this - you are on a cruise ship, travelling through Senegalese waters, talking to a random bloke at a bar sipping on your favourite drink. Both of you are admiring a leggy blonde wairess at the bar. The bloke begins to tell a story of a speculative oil exploration company he bought into in the high 4 cent range 4 years ago
He tells of a discovery of a world class oil field and a further 10 out of 11 successful drills over the three years since the discovery.

You begin to drool knowing that the oil price, exchange rate and overall sharemarket are all quite favourable..

You ask 'how much are the shares worth now?'

He replies '4.1 cents'

Your jaw hits the floor...

You reply 'what went so wrong?'

He looks at you and says:
'Look management have done a perfect job but there are a lot of other external factors, in fact every factor I can think of other than management decisions are the cause of the shareprice being where it is.
But look we are really well placed moving forward with 3 years still until first oil, we will end up with a lot of high interest debt and at least 10.4 billion shares on the register to help us weather any storm'

You decide that this bloke is nuts and change the subject to the legs on the waitress, before quickly leaving'