I can understand the frustration, however I'd hate for a long...

I can understand the frustration, however I'd hate for a long suffering shareholder to be broken by this one, when in fact it could be that we're now "jumping at shadows".

I got the impression from several conversations I'd had, that new management were skilled from experience, and mindful of the need to bring the project components together in a strategic way. This is especially important in cases like this where the components are multi layered and interdependent, and where third parties will use whatever leverage they can to carve out a better deal for themselves. I think this was the scenario we found ourselves in after locking Taurus in early on the previous project iteration (BFSU 2019), they basically held the trump card and we paid for it in several ways.

So my guess/hope is that a lot has been going on in the background, simultaneously on many fronts, with the aim of bringing all the pieces together in a well timed contractual manoeuvre, and not leaving any one party with control over the process.

It wouldn't be possible for finance commitments to happen independent of the newly modelled BFS, so an announcement of this sort should be expected. The strategic assessment being completed also indicates that NAIF still see the strategic merit in the project and have now progressed to the negotiations and DD stage. The recent media hype tried to play on the fact that this was at risk.

It also became clear at some point in discussions with old Bruce that after the forming of the JV, many of the previous agreements needed to be redrawn to apply to the new JV entity, and importantly redrawn to apply to the new project design and metrics.

The extra engineering that will be available by the time the engineering contract is signed could save between 5% - 10% of the build cost in removed risk premiums, so this reduces the amount of gap that may exist by a significant amount and means less money that needs to be raised, so worth the wait in my mind given it doesn't seem to threaten a start in the next dry season.

In closing I couldn't help noting IMA shareprice hitting 24c yesterday and seeing that a director of IMA's major shareholder bought another $500K of stock in his own name on market in early November. Maybe that's in relation to IMA being close to securing new life for the company, and Eneabba may well be where that new life will be coming from. A sale of Eneabba will be a welcome boost to SFX's cash position and be another component that reduces the need for a capital raise.