Ok, fair questions, and perhaps others are curious too..
A number of very knowledgeable posters have already established (reasonably accurately) that LD-1 could be a 2-2.5TCF discovery. That's huge, but to be classified as commercial, that's what the production flow test will determine. A production flow test will gather information on reservoir deliverability, reservoir fluids, reservoir pressures and potential reservoir boundaries, which is what is required to define the commerciality of this gas discovery. That test is scheduled by early Q1 2022.
All of the data from drilling LD-1 including the production test data will then be reviewed by an independent reserves certifier to estimate the Contingent Resources (the 2C number). This should come about 17 days post completion of the flow test, give or take a few days.
Wrt to offtakes, it is not unusual to negotiate an option for offtake before FID or even before you start drilling the well. For example, STX negotiated an offtake option with CSBP (Wesfarmers chemicals) for 100PJ's of gas from their West Errugulla discovery. CSBP paid STX $5m to secure the GSA option to which STX used in drilling the well. The idea is you be conservative with how much you pre-sell as STX ended up booking initial 2P reserves of 150PJ from WE.... so far anyway. They hope to increase this to 400PJ and then sign more GSA's.
So it's just another funding option for NWE to fund their projected exploration and appraisal program for 2022/23. I think the fact that NWE could be sitting on such significant gas reserves that is uncontracted could make them very, very attractive. For all the reasons I have said in previous posts.
