Ann: Halliburton Agreement & Jaws-1 Update, page-59

Buy Early, Sell Before Spud. The classic O&G short term trading tactic. When you identify a company with an upcoming high impact, company making well (usually oil or offshore - a real Disallowed opportunity) and buy in months before spud, with the intention of selling into the interest building in anticipation of the well.

The point is that it can be a 10% COS well that's overwhelmingly likely to end in tears, so you sell out before spud and lock in your profits, so that it doesn't matter whether the well is a success or not. Usually BESBSs will ramp the stock shamelessly in the interim to try and get some FOMO investors and traders into the stock.

It doesn't tend to work as well these days as it used to. I guess the arrival of algo trading and the ease of shorting means you can't trust that the stock will run hard in the weeks before spud. Although STX ran from the high 5s to 8c so no doubt a few BESBSs made a quick profit. But no doubt they were hoping for 10c or so.