bg: slow to shore up reserves, page-35

Well, that was a rant.

I am not going to bother engaging in the 'mine is bigger than yours' debate between ESG, BOW and MEL.

ALL these companies are going to go up the foodchain. They will ALL be required to feed the beasts which are the QLD LNG projects. And as the three largest remaining independents, they are the three most likely to be plucked first.

Not only that, in this game of musical chairs, when one goes, it is likely that all three would go. Once a major is busy trying to secure one resource, it just puts even more pressure on the other majors to grab one of the remaining targets. No project wants to be the one who is stuck having to scavenge amongst the scraps to achieve the requisite size of project they are after.

It is this competitive process, where the large LNG projects outnumber the large independents, which will drive the value in all these companies.

So I wish all BOW holders, and MEL holders every success. I hope all three extract a king's ransom out of their respective buyers.

Yaq