I’m finally home after attending this morning’s meeting. I’m...

I’m finally home after attending this morning’s meeting. I’m sitting here trying to think of what you don’t already know. In essence everyone is frustrated with the delays but nothing that has happened to change their “we’re still very bullish about prospects” attitudes.
The one thing that many of you will be pleased to hear is that the company in hindsight feels they should have given out more updates in recent weeks. A message that they intend to remedy. We talked about the fine line between a certain other connected company (in the past) giving out info on trivia as compared to NEN waiting until they had something worthwhile. In short, they intend to give more regular updates.
I also keep reporting back about the frustrations of ‘breakdowns’ (with an emphasis on packers). Ken has now got to the stage of where he’s not going to pay for work done until there’s been an inspection of the failed components. Is it because we’re such a small fish among monsters that we’re getting inferior service? I think he said he’s visiting California shortly to talk this issue through.
The following has probably been covered by others (I’ve not had time to check) but I’ll charge ahead with notes I made.
Lower Antelope looks like it might produce 600 – 800 bpd – we’ll hear news of this in a few weeks time.
Lower Stevens. The packer has been retrieved and testing has been underway for over 24hrs. Given the delays the testing crew have now agreed to start on a 24 hour shift basis but……it’s Thanks Giving and this is bigger than Xmas in California. Even so Ken hopes (fingers crossed) they’ll have something reportable in a week. He did make the point that this is a very deep well for California – I’m not sure whether he meant that the crew are not used to these conditions OR it’s just difficult when you have such a small diameter well to retrieve the required info.
This second well has shown they’re working in the same geological formations – and I repeat “we’re very bullish about the future of Paloma”.
NSA – the permitting should have come through two days ago but with Thanks Giving it probably won’t get actioned until next week.
Glau – they’re finalising data. It looks very similar to NSA and the exploratory well should come in early in the new year.
Ken spent some time reinforcing the great deal it was getting ENI on board. They’ve recently discovered what was described as a monster gas find in Mozambique and another success in Egypt. In other words they know how to deal with large discoveries and yet, they too are very bullish on the Vietnamese blocks. ENI are negotiating rigs right now and two wells will be dug in 2013 however, large a company that they are, they’re still in a queue with others wanting to drill. (possibly June for the first exploratory drill)
I obviously got it wrong at the last meeting. The 3D survey results were not given today as I reported they would be. Ken said that the preliminary results they have are very impressive. They believe they’re right on trend to the ExonMobil discovery. That company has not published any detail of that find but as I’ve mentioned previously, they went ahead without waiting for up to date survey results. Now, significantly, they’re doing 3D testing. As Ken observed, a company of this size has to be VERY interesting to stay focussed in one area. Alan interjected at this point saying that the Vietnamese Govt does not want 3D testing results in the public domain and, added, neither do we want our rivals to know what we have.
Indonesia. Again, this looks very exciting. A previous company has made a significant discovery of gas but weren’t interested as the price at the time was only around $2 (Singapore are buying from Indonesia at near $10 at the moment.) The company left the field when they couldn’t find oil.
There has been a significant discovery south of NEN’s field and the infrastructure to bring that gas on shore goes through our zone – makes this field even more interesting for future development.
I deliberately asked the question as to how NEN, a minnow, has so many great prospects. (I’d already heard the story but I figured others might find it reassuring). For those who hadn’t heard, Dr Alan Stein and Ken brought to NEN four tonnes of data – he mentioned how many kilometres of paper that was but I didn’t catch the detail. In short other experienced geologists had accumulated years of data which they didn’t want sitting on some shelf. They looked for people what would use it wisely AND DID NOT WANT REMUNERATION FOR IT just as long as their life’s work wasn’t wasted.
As can be imagined it still took wise heads to find the significant cherries in this enormous basket of info.
Final words, “We are not a one trick pony”, “We’re very bullish about our future”, “If someone wants to buy any of our fields we’re open to offers”.
Right! That’s it, I’m done. NO, one last point, staff and directors have 8% of the shares in NEN. They are unable to trade while any testing is in operation.
Keep the faith, James