I expect that is the conclusion that most long term holders have come to regarding PL. Anyone holding for a few weeks could perhaps be forgiven for not believing it- afterall, Landau always talks a good game, gives good interviews, and speaks like he knows what he's doing.
It takes about 6-9 months, in my experience, to fully realise that the CEO isn't all he's cracked up to be. Took me from February 2010 to about September 2010 before the penny finally dropped. Because of my belief (at the time) that PL was going to guide this ship to the big time (yeah I believed all the rubbish about the 'Range Rocket' back then too), I missed out on what (in hindsight) was a massive selling opportunity at 7p (which was just after the acquisition of 10% of Trinidad) before the retrace to 4p. Looking back it was obvious- 10% of Trinidad was purchased for $4.5m, so why should it have added £50m to the market cap? (which is what 3 extra pence was at the time). Unfortunately I still had faith in all the Puntland stuff and our 'amazing' CEO then, so missed out on the opportunity to basically double my money. However in time everyone comes to realise how to play this one- ride the hype wave, but never believe the hype.
The comment in the announcement made prior to the recent one, on the 12/09/2011 that said TD should be reached by 'late September' was indeed an insult to everyone's intelligence, expecially when in the same document the current depth was stated as only 1100m. Range are now at 1500m. That's 400m in a month, or about 13m a day- and they've not started drilling through the granite/volcanic rock yet. To get to 3000m at the current average rate would take- wait for it- 115 more days (1500m/13m). Put it this way- I certainly don't think we'll be seeing TD prior to December- and traditionally, the deeper a drill gets, the slower it goes.
Investors need to hope that whatever this VSP survey does, it provides them with an idea of how to speed up drilling, because the current rate of drilling can't be sustained for very long considering the cash needed to hire rigs.
But above all, Landau needs to stop over-promising. Remember when we were told these Georgia drills would take 6 weeks?
RRS Price at posting:
14.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
