Anthony,So if we follow your logic, and ESG needed to buy...

Anthony,

So if we follow your logic, and ESG needed to buy themselves more time to upgrade their reserves, why sign a deal with Santos that put them out of business after October?

Why wouldn't you delay your reserves upgrade and live to fight another day?

Or, give the market the contingent resource upgrade that is certainly available from all the greenfields corehole drilling down in the last 18 months?

Wait just a matter of a few months until the Carbon Price is legislated, and investment decisions can be made on new gas-fired power stations?

Why not wait a few more months such that the Tintsfield pilot was producing at rates sufficient to book reserves...

Instead, by coming to this agreement with Santos, ESG have put the ultimate hard deadline on their company. Hardly the behaviour of a company who wanted to buy themselves more time, surely?

It's not as if ESG don't have a habit of pushing back deadlines too... why not do it again?

This is what doesn't make sense to many people, Anthony. Putting a hard deadline of October (at which it is game over), rather than a soft and changeable reserves target of (end of) August doesn't exactly seem like great strategy.

If ESG knows that this hard deadline will draw other bidders, it makes sense. If however, ESG needed more time to get the requisite data for reserves from Tintsfield, falling on your sword makes no sense.

Yaq