Ann: Investor Presentation - RIU Good Oil Conference, page-22

SNE 100% strike rate for wells drilled so far.  It is pretty amazing to me and makes me wonder about the technology that is available to companies these days.

My personal experience with seismic came some 40 years ago for Uranium exploration in northern Saskatchewan.  The company had found uraniferous boulders on this small island in the middle of a small ocean-like lake and wondered how deep the basement might be.

They gave me a 14 pound sledge hammer, steel plate, a few geophones and maybe 5 minutes of training.  Plane helicopter to....


The seismic results may have picked up clays to 10m.   Subsequent drilling didn't reach basement by ?800m a bit beyond the equipment they provided.

For those outside of geophysics the advances that have been made over the years are a bit like magic.  The economic advantage of new technologies mean they can be closely guarded secrets that are revealed after successes (or failures).

Of course macro economic issues play a major role but the plays I am aware of FAR, CVN, 88E and PCL as the main ones give me a hint of what technology and stratigraphy advancements are out there.  No longer is it simple anticlines for oil and gas (not that it has been that simple) but complex fan arrays with stratigraphic traps at my simplistic level of understanding.

FAR's presentations show maps along these lines;


A recent presentation from a competitor indicates, to me, some of the more advanced processing which is likely to be available to FAR.  Probabilities of reasonable sands and oil bearing units combined with seismic sections and plans to give drill targets.  Whether they contain oil/gas only the drill will tell.


Coming from a mineral rather than a petroleum exploration background it is interesting to see how such technologies can be applied in the search for resources that are becoming more difficult to find by "stubbing" one's toe on an outcrop.  The reward for unlocking the key to these deeper targets has some (many? with deep pockets) companies using seismic in what may be a much tougher geological environment than Oil and Gas.  A recent example but no means the only one....



Exploration, whether O&G or minerals, follows certain statistical rules that only drills can sort out (at the moment) so for me Samo represents a target with a good probability of success and encourages me back into FAR after watching its SP drift sideways in spite of the success at SNE.  This latter resource is a great 'safety net' as many here recognize.

Thanks to those who also share hard earned knowledge on this site and others.

GLTAH