good to have assets, page-3

Wasabi, I wouldn't hold my breath on the oil assets! The problem there is that they have done their dough on the drilling they have funded so far and they are not going to drill again. All they can hope for is that someone will think it is good enough to farm-in on and pay the full cost of drilling with the JV partners free carried. In the past the JV partners have floated GOP and MOG as spin-offs to do that for them but the market is probably not right to do the exuberant wildcat thing again at the moment. The other problem is that most of their prospects are probably gasfields and there is no market for new gas in that area. ESSO and friends control all the markets and processing facilities and are not interested in playing ball. If they were, SER and BAS etc would be happily funding the development of their existing gasfields to get them into production. Currently I just can't see a farm-in partner popping up on the chance of hitting oil, despite the great 3D seismic work the JV partners have completed over these leases. And the problem with that is that they will eventually lose those leases due to inaction because they can no longer fund "action". At this stage, I'd rather see SER sell their JV interests in Bass Strait (if they can find a bidder) or better still sell them into a new float (if the market will take it) and use the cash to develop Uley where their long term future is looking better by the day given movements in Graphite pricing and demand.