Ann: Market Update, page-22

Plenty has changed. The oil and gas industry in the 1980s bears almost no resemblance to that today, 30 years later.

If you'd told somebody in the 1980s they could get economic gas out of shales, you'd have been laughed at. Likewise tight sands. Likewise coal seams. Almost nothing in the Cooper currently developed today would be economic in the 80s either.

Then there's a very significant increase in gas prices. If Dingo is connected to the east coast they could get $7+ instead of $2-3. That makes a huge difference.

The wells already in Dingo are sunk costs, which means Dingo doesn't mean to be economic in its entirety. It only needs to be economic going forward from the date of CTP's purchase. If they put more wells into in the future they will no doubt go with horizontals or fracs.

It doesn't mean Dingo will be a barnstormer, because obviously the rocks themselves are still the same, the GIP and the reservoir quality don't change. But extraction techniques, costs, infrastructure, regulatory regimes, and market dynamics all change over time and can change an uneconomic field into a comfortably economic field.

All in all, be very careful of using 1980s opinions on anything in the oil industry.