announcement 4 - nbt voting intentions, page-3

Rafish,

As my new alter ego is not allowed to post yet, FlyingDr has risen from the grave to answer your question about the Karoon deal.

The $800m Origin-Karoon deal is well known to us. Using, the base rate of this deal (US $600m), by my calcs, gives about AUD $0.50/GJ, which compares well with the independent expert's report (IER) valuation of our Crux assets of about $0.535/GJ.

I'm not in a position to comment on the comparability of the various Browse projects, but with the transactions that have been made, albeit larger projects, are around the $0.50-$1.00 mark. I also, note that this Origin-Karoon deal was a somewhat distressed sale, in my opinion, though nowhere near the position we now face at Nexus. There did seem to be plenty of competition for their stake, but strategically it was a larger % of a larger project.

Please read my annotated response to Deloitte's letter to me on Friday that is on NexusBattle, and my original letter for context. The main problem that I saw with the IER was how the IER valued the Auriga and Caelum wells at $0.10/GJ as though they were isolated prospects. But, if "successful" are likely to have a very large impact on the economics of the Crux project. This was supported by BBY modelling (which the IE did not bother doing!) last year.

I spoke with the BBY analyst yesterday, and it is likely that he will revisit his valuations. But this will likely be well after the vote next week. If this gets to a vote.

Yesterday's announcements from Shell (via Nexus) were trivial in terms of the dollar amounts. It is the moving of the drilling time that, in my opinion, was Shells first strategic move in this takeover story/soap opera.

Like the now famous brinkmanship of US politics, negotiations on this deal will go down to the wire.

I note that NBT have just placed their personal voting intentions online. I would encourage shareholders to vote sooner rather than later. This, in my opinion, will show Nexus the depth of shareholder sentiment sooner, and get them of their proverbials to do some negotiation!

the ex-FlyingDr.