Sorry GDN, you seem to have missed my lines of thinking - what I...

Sorry GDN, you seem to have missed my lines of thinking - what I believe the company should have done is completely different to what it has done.

What I would have liked OEL to do
What I would have liked to have seen is it to be able to retire it's debt through a series of measures including closing the hedged position, reduce non-committed capex and raising some cash. Being banged up by the bankers (esp MQ) is never a good spot to be in when distressed.

What OEL has done
What happened with F5 is out of their control. This well was committed before the oil price crash on the 20th February and therefore no getting out of this.

In terms of GC21, as you know, the capex was committed and the majority of this quarters cash capex (per the forecast cash outflows in the quarterly). Of course they need to get GC21 on stream if they're going on the "all in route" with regards to it's production. They are a 16% minority partner in the JV. It would be unlikely OEL would be able to convince Talos to reduce production either.

Given they would be unlikely to be able to reduce GC21 production BUT if they could take measures to retire debt, then reducing SM71 production would have been preferable to save the oil for a better day. We know the SM71 margin is around $10 at current rates so I'm not sure why you say we don't know the variable costs. We also know the fixed costs from reviewing the quarterlies and reports. It's also interesting that MA was thinking along the same lines as me in terms of reducing SM71 production to align with hedging:

B: Will Otto consider reducing production rates to the hedged position only if oil price continues to fall and save those barrels for "another day"? There doesn't seem to be much point in producing additional bbls if we are not hedged and only making single $ in margin, especially when converting behind the pipe / probable reserves would not be profitable.
MA: Potentially – topic for discussion with our various operators. Will be something that is considered if the current price conditions persist.

I note you've just come back for the bad news but feel free to read all my posts. I was querying covenants during the weekend posts, emailed the company and took a risked based assessment that the company was ok given the series of announcements in the last month. Clearly, if I had all available information I would not have gone down the same route the company has done. I advocated strongly when WTI was hovering at $36 post the OPEC+ disagreement for the Co to take out 3 - 4 months of hedges given the strong contango (into the $40's). MA has said there hasn't been an opportunity due to the volatility. Well, I saw $36 for a fair bit of time. And I saw $40's on month 3, 4 and 5 too. Add in our LLS premium and a collar and it we could have had a risk free, low cost oil hedge protecting shareholders....instead, we are staring down the barrel of significant dilution in addition to -90% returns over the past year. You couldn't make this stuff up.