bg and potential gas developments

Hi all

I've been reviewing what we know about the JV's interest in a gas development. I've found a couple of interesting and a couple of perhaps anomolous bits of information as follows:

1) BG in a presention on "Strategy and 1 Half Results: 27 July" (see website under Presentations) allude to the future potential of Mauritania for gas and LNG developments (slide 15) and a graphic on slide 25 shows a group of development sites as a trio based around Tevet (presumably Chinguetti and Banda are the other two).

2) I checked all the results of wells to date and its interesting that Tevet had a 70m gas cap above 44m of oil. Chinguetti has gas that is being re-injected into Banda and Banda had a 100m gas leg and HDR give Banda reserves as potentially 2.0-3.0 Tcf. So I reckon these three together could go close to warranting an LNG development (somewhere I recall seeing that 4 Tcf were required for a development).

3) Then you have Tiof ... and here I find some of the information a bit anomolous. Tiof 1 on 13/11/04 was reported as having 49m of gas above 39m of oil. Most of the other Tiof wells were further west and had no gas. Tiof 5 to the east was reported in December 04 as having 24m of oil but no gas was reported, and yet in the August 05 Information Brochure the graphic on the Tiof system shows a gas reservoir on all of the eastern 1/3 of the system that includes both Tiof 1 and Tiof 5???? Also, the primary production test thus far was on Tiof 6 in February 05. When drilled it ws reported to have a gross oil column of 124m and no evidence of a gas or water leg. Hmmmmmmm... then we have flow test results of 12,400 bopd AND 11.0 million standard cubic feet pd of gas??????? You have to assume then that the gas is interspersed in sands in amongst the oil.

4) Anyway .. given that the Tiof system is so large and that even where no gas leg has been reported (eg Tiof 6) we have substantial gas flows ... its entirely possible that there is a lot of gas at Tiof and that this could be developed at some stage along with any other tie-ins to future near discoveries. Any comments?

5) Just a note of interest: someone the other day wondered what the EEA at Chinguetti meant. It is "Exclusive Exploitation Authorisation".

I wonder when we are going to get an announcement about a gas development? One of the earlier Information Brochures this year I think had the JV targeting sufficient gas reserves by specifically appraising areas to the north-east of Banda ... but this seems to have disappeared from subsequent Brochures. Appraisal of Banda itself was done when the gas re-injection well was completed this year ...and very positive comments were made on this as a gas production "test". But further appraisal of the area for gas is something I am hoping will be still on the agenda .. and something that we might hear about soon.

You could imagine that given the time and substantial funds required, that perhaps HDR will sell its rights to the gas to BG/WPL to avoid this committment and to fund future exploration, and development of Tiof and Guyane?? Just an idea of mine .... anyone think it has ANY merit?

Cheers

H