As promised, I attended the AusIMM session at the Royal Exchange...

As promised, I attended the AusIMM session at the Royal Exchange of Sydney, in Gresham St, on Wednesday night. Len was the guest speaker.

The presentation was very well received by a fairly knowledgeable audience, composed mainly of professionals in the Minerals field. Len invited any questions whatsoever - saying that hed had so many aggressive and combative questions over the last several weeks that he could cope with anything - and he promised to answer all questions honestly and candidly.

Basically, Len presented a similar presentation to the presentation given to the Australian Energy and Utility Summit. However, there were some notable differences.

Len talked extensively about the events of recent weeks, and spent quite a bit of time explaining how the media and politicians can take over the issues, and completely ignore facts and science.

He did mention that Kingaroy is still the primary goal of CXY.

He also discussed the state of UCG generally in the world - pointing out that it now had a sufficient head of steam in multiple countries all around the world so as to be virtually unstoppable, regardless of what happens in Queensland. He discussed the many CXY projects that were upcoming. A further 2 projects in China are very close to being announced by CXY.

So lots happening in CXY, and UCG in general, although sometimes it seems that Kingaroy is the only project in existence.

Len talked quite a bit about the different UCG trials in Queensland, and contrary to popular belief, the 3 companies do seem to talk together and share learnings to a large extent. Its worthy of note that the Ausimm chairman on the night was also a CNX board member, and he seemed to be a good friend of Lens. They both obviously got on well together, and shared experieces and learnings with each other.

Unfortunately, the question time was cut short by time constraints. However, one interesting question at the end - has CXY worked out the cause of the well failure? Len stated that a huge amount of work had gone into this investigation, and the conclusion basically was a blockage, quite high up in the well, at about the 60m mark, caused by a combination of ash carry over and grout. The blockage, as far as I could understand, resulted in local overheating, and water trapped behind the casing consequently caused the failure. Again, the question time was cut short, and Im sure many would have liked to pursue this line of questioning in more depth.

After the presentation, in private discussion, I asked Len what he thought would happen with respect to the Kingaroy project. Lens reply - If the outcome was based on science and technology, theres be no question - Kingaroy would proceed - but unfortunately, its become a political issue, and he didnt know how it would play out.

My conclusion - Len is passionate about this, and is definitely not sitting back and waiting to see what happens. Hes smart and knowledgable, and if anyone can get the Kingaroy project back on track, Len can.

All in all, I was considerably heartened both by Lens passion and knowledge, and also by his view on the future of UCG.