answers to questions !, page-10

A couple of thoughts after going to the AGM - sorry about the random stream of consciousness:
* There's not much money for anything at all including drilling. Then again, in this market I'm not sure that a substantial upgrade in/converstion of resources would do much anyway (e.g. see effects of good results reported by EPG already in the past few months)
* Survival cashflow will come over the summer months but without injection of capital/significant announcements (see next three points), there's not going to be a lot of action happening.
* IMHO, short term main game should be electricity production at Avion. Project is estimated to cost 15-20m euro and return 10m euro/year in revenue. Unsure as to how much of this revenue will displace existing revenue but given these two facts, PF should be a no-brainer and the project should go ahead. I'm guessing there are some issues preventing that/slowing it down - PF would require security over the asset (plant and/or resource) which will probably need to be negotiated with Transcor given their security over Gazonor. This is where NFJ should be proving his worth (or otherwise - let's put some pressure on! :) ).
* Negotiations on getting access to the 60 existing wells (at Avion right??) are continuing. This would be low risk and high return if successful and would provide significant cash flow and kick start the process of drilling, other expenditure, etc. Problem is that content of extra gas may or may not be able to be fed into the grid. Again a good reason to get the electricity plant going - if low energy content, it may be fed into the electricity generation and if high energy, option is there to burn or sell into pipeline. On the other hand, cheaper option would be to find the wells with high energy content and mix with existing gas to allow sale at pipeline spec (this is risky as an option though if such high energy gas mines do not exist and capex is spent and not recoverable through electricity sales).
* Another possibility was JV with larger partner with discussions ongoing. Would be disappointed if EPG gave away too much but then part of a cake is better than none at all! Was impressed that Tony has resisted this at the offered terms because, as he mentioned, there are a lot of distressed assets out there that will get the capital before EPG, at the detriment to their shareholders.