Evening all,
Tomorrow will mark day 14 of the Lockyer-2 drill. I was very much hoping for a "material" operational update from NWE this morning as I would be 99% sure the intermediate hole would have been completed by now. Recall that for LD-1 it took ~10-11 days of drilling for both top & intermediate holes to be completed... and as I wrote last week, we were notified by the previous NWE BoD that
elevated gas shows were evident at various depths during drilling of the LD-1 intermediate section. If I was a betting man (and clearly I am!) I am 99.9% certain the drillers would have encountered elevated gas shows during drilling of this section. It is after all, an appraisal well, not an exploration well. We should be well past 3,000m MDRT at this stage, drilling through the Dongara and Wagina formations... I'll see if I can dig up some previous time vs depth charts that were done for the LD-1 drill, I find visuals can really help some people, me included.
So, now it seems we need to accept that us remaining rebel SHs will not be getting any Lockyer-2 operational updates. It would appear we are now being treated as if NWE is part of MIN and "material" updates will be few and far.
In fact, it got me thinking.... as I reflected on the LD-1 drill campaign and decided to do a comparison to what MIN published via ASX announcements for the whole LD-1 campaign (that is spud to flow testing) vs what NWE published...
NWE published a total of... 22 announcements.... from the 6th July '21 "rig secured" to the 30th June '22 "LD project update". And of those 22 announcements that were price sensitive? All 22 - go figure!!
And ---- that's not including the 5 Trading Halts NWE had through-out the whole LD-1 campaign. Talk about excellent communication from the previous "shareholder aligned" NWE BoD... and it just highlights my previous point at how price sensitive every-single-step of the journey is. As it should be for the Lockyer-2 drill.
OK, I am sure you are all wondering, what about MIN?.... well, MIN had just 4 announcements for the whole LD-1 campaign. And of those 4... only 2 were deemed price sensitive.
So.... unfortunately, if we are going by MIN's history of reporting schedule... us NWE SHs will be waiting ~35 days until we know the result of Lockyer-2. Until then, just tend to your mushrooms.
Is this fair? IMO, no it's not. We remaining shareholders are entitled to know the status of this significant drill campaign. It may not be material to a $16b MC company but it certainly is to us. Last time I looked we are not a wholly owned subsidiary of MIN.
Just wanted to also touch on the trading of the last 2 weeks. It has really come off... see below chart.
We haven't had a trading day above 10m volume for 12 days. And because we haven't seen a recent updated SSN from MIN it means those that are committed, are sitting tight. If you were inclined to sell out, you'd either sell on market or accept MINs scrip. I don't see much action volume wise until the drill is done and we probs won't be hearing much from MIN. But if volume and price were to spike, it might mean something about the current drill...
| Date | Open $ | High $ | Low $ | Close $ | Change $ | Change % | Volume |
|---|
| 1 | 24/03/2023 | 0.058 | 0.06 | 0.058 | 0.059 | 0.002 | 3.51 | 2,575,314 |
|---|
| 2 | 23/03/2023 | 0.061 | 0.061 | 0.057 | 0.057 | -0.004 | -6.56 | 2,913,593 |
|---|
| 3 | 22/03/2023 | 0.059 | 0.062 | 0.059 | 0.061 | 0 | 0 | 9,769,381 |
|---|
| 4 | 21/03/2023 | 0.058 | 0.061 | 0.058 | 0.061 | 0.002 | 3.39 | 2,889,812 |
|---|
| 5 | 20/03/2023 | 0.059 | 0.062 | 0.059 | 0.059 | -0.003 | -4.84 | 3,977,090 |
|---|
| 6 | 17/03/2023 | 0.06 | 0.062 | 0.06 | 0.062 | 0.006 | 10.71 | 8,697,744 |
|---|
| 7 | 16/03/2023 | 0.058 | 0.059 | 0.056 | 0.056 | -0.002 | -3.45 | 6,987,092 |
|---|
| 8 | 15/03/2023 | 0.059 | 0.062 | 0.058 | 0.058 | -0.001 | -1.69 | 3,787,936 |
|---|
| 9 | 14/03/2023 | 0.063 | 0.063 | 0.058 | 0.059 | -0.006 | -9.23 | 7,404,943 |
|---|
| 10 | 13/03/2023 | 0.063 | 0.065 | 0.063 | 0.065 | 0 | 0 | 4,101,508 |
|---|
| 11 | 10/03/2023 | 0.067 | 0.068 | 0.064 | 0.065 | -0.002 | -2.99 | 8,662,849 |
|---|
GLTA
