General Thoughts, page-183

It has been hit after hit. And while the various majors have attempted to keep a lid on things somewhat, the commentary so far has been rather positive. For example:

• Regarding Shell's Graff-1X, "One well-placed industry source said that when drillers opened the downhole choke, oil “came at them like a train”, which meant care had to be taken to control the flow. Describing one of the tests, the source said the flow rate was “big”, with the oil coming “hard and fast”. (upstream 12/05);

• Shell upstream director Zoe Yujnovich noted, "What we’re most pleased about… is that out of three exploration wells and one appraisal well we’ve drilled, we have had top quartile well performance in every single one.” (upstream 15/06);

• Regarding Venus, Patrick Pouyanne, TotalEnergies chief executive noted "The oil column is very big," he said, shortly after stressing that results from the appraisal well were "very positive." "My focus at the moment is Namibia. My priority is to see Namibia come through." (upstream 28/07); and

• Galp chief executive Filipe Silva told analysts on Monday that while “it’s too early” to share detailed information on prospectivity, “it looks like its large and high quality, but I’ll stop there”. (upstream 01/08).

Add to that the size and therefore potential of Saturn...really does boggle the mind.