Disappointing progress & genuinely concerned share holder, page-12

Raven2014

The above extract from your post is not a valid analysis. The options were due for conversion at the end of March 2014. The expectation was that they would be supported by two factors - (1) CTP's drill of Surprise East in January-February 2014, and (2) STO's drill of Mt Kitty in Feb-March 2014. Neither happened but it had nothing to do with the flip of a coin.

The reasons were:

First Reason - There was heavy rain in the Amadeus area such as required CTP to delay the arrival of its rig. It would never have got there if they had tried to brave it out. Once those desert roads get a soaking you cannot move heavy machinery over them. Having delayed the rig, CTP lost its booking.

June 2014 was the first available time of their next opportunity to call a rig into the Kintore area. As that time approached, CTP's committment to drilling was reconsidered because of three factors.

These were: (1) by then its ability to fund a drilling campaign was not comfortable (see earlier posts from 2 weeks ago); (2) there were signs that the Surprise geology had been misunderstood (unexpected reduction of flow rate) and wiser heads felt that more analysis was appropriate; and (3) Major activity at Surprise in June-July 2014 would push hard up against two other major tasks that CTP personnel were obliged to perform at that time - the Whiteley 1 well in SGB and the pipeline planning and contracting for Dingo.

None of this was coin flipping. Management is doubtless as unhappy as you and I are. I am sure that they would have preferred the m$48 for the options but if they had adopted a "drill Surprise at any cost" approach that really would have been coin flipping. If CTP had mis-stepped SGB or Dingo while gambling its last m$10 on Surprise you would have really had something to complain about.

2nd Reason - STO did not perform on Mt Kitty within the end of march date that every one was expecting. Why? I don't know. I speculate it was because the rig was late finishing its previous job at Mereenie for reasons related to the heavy rain that covered most of the Amadeus in February.

The reasons why 2014 has not gone as we all hoped are quite straight forward and not related to management incompetence or lack of resolve. They are just normal operational factors.