In view of the "speculation" aspects of this thread I thought...

In view of the "speculation" aspects of this thread I thought the following comments from Hardman's chairman Alan Burns to me in an email following the Chinguetti "Plugged and abandoned" debarcle and before Courbine might be of interest.

"From my personal point of view I would say subjectively that it is highly unusual to get an oil strike like this in the first hole of a new basin and expect the next one to hit also on a totally different style of target is asking a bit too much. However a failure on the next well (Courbine) means nothing to Chinguetti which is on a salt dome and there are plenty of salt domes to drill in the area. This age salt dome is similar to major producing regions of Texas, Mexico and Louisiana and they are usually prolific producers.
I cannot imagine the situation where there is not another well on Chinguetti nor on other salt domes nearby-----"

We all know now the success hit rates on Miocenes since then and by now WPL/HDR no doubt have a pretty good understanding of the structures around the areas. So it would seem the chances of successful hits in the next few wells would be very good. (I'm afraid I still haven't grasped the P10, P50, P90 system yet)

Another part of the email now gives an insight into the past information flow that we patient shareholders have enjoyed (?)

"-----we do not employ PR people for a good reason---"
and
"Our partner ENI-AGIP wanted to keep the hole so called "tight hole" a common major oil company practice to avoid giving information to competitors. We managed to negotiate a a compromise utilising the ASX requirements to put out the information we have."

Since AGIP's departure the WPL ann's seem to be different than previously. We now see an element of enthusiasm in their public utterings.