Beans,Chinguetti is in 800m of water, Banda is only 300m. This...

Beans,

Chinguetti is in 800m of water, Banda is only 300m. This is very shallow by oil industry standards.

Nick Hoffman, Geophysical Associate,BHP Petroleum
Date: Tue Feb 11 17:03:48 1997:

"The deepest oil wells that I know are drilled to about 6km.... Most normal oil wells are drilled to about 3000 to 5000 metres."

http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:DUkiThahB0IC:www.madsci.org/posts/archives/mar97/855593397.Es.r.html+deepest+oil+drilling&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Some other people have commented on the issue of share dilution. The last issue increased the number of shares on issue from around 400m to 440m. A 10% dilution that was more than offset by the additional cash backing contributed by those new holders who paid above the current market price to gain their stake. HDR is likely to continue to issue new shares each year until 2005 when the cash starts flowing from Mauritania. As Sailorgirl said, the potential reserves in Mauritania are immense, a 10% annual dilution will be insignificant compared to a 100% annual increase in proven reserves.

Whatever the merits of ARQ no stock on the ASX offers as much upside as HDR over the next 3 years.