heavy lifting

I apologise to everyone for being tardy in reporting back from the Oil and Gas Conference, but I guess it is OK, as DM would say I'm on NWE time .... lol.

It is also good to see DM actually posting some positives re the NWE position.

The NWE stand at the conference was constantly being approached by investors and investor houses.
Peter, Andrew and Shelly did an outstanding job of explaining where we were at and those who listened had many questions and they were answered as accurately and as fully as they could.

Nwe were spoken about/referred to by a number of presenters from other companies. Always in absolutely respectful tones.
The industry are accutely aware of the well and what has been discovered.
One presenter who was addressing the objections to fraccing and liasing with the general public, stressed how important it was that companies did everything absolutely to the highest standard to ensure that there were no environmental mishaps. He was of the view that any environmental accident would cause the industry as a whole, mega problems.
This is all old news as far as most of us are concerned but it was, I think, an audience which was still new to the whole on shore alternative energy supply industry.

I sensed an increased awareness of Shale .... an increased willingness for delegates to learn about it and also the companies who were presenting were emphasising their shale assets more than their traditional resources. I believe that the momentum is building.

One company in its presentation stated that there are a significant number of Mid tier companies who missed out on the Shale boom in the USA who are now out with their check books looking for resources so as not to miss out again.

A couple of those sniffing around AWE and ourselves would change the game quickly.
They may even want to come on board to take a share and to pay for development. The resource is being derisked day by day and so would be an attractive proposition. It would also mean that we could retain a bigger percentage of the stake.

I personally spoke to two shale (desk)experts who have come across to advise one of the major investment houses. They expressed the opinion, unprompted by me, that the results that NWE had achieved to date were outstanding. That was from their experience from the USA industry.

I must say "that made my day".

Peter spent most of the two days in meetings with investor house representatives discussing NWE in private sessions.
I also understand that he spent the following day in meetings with these investment houses also.
So in terms of the "heavy lifting", Peter is doing the hard yards. The string is stretching and when it moves I believe it will run pretty hard.
In saying that, how hard it runs will depend on the results and how excited the bigger players get.

All in all, I think that the team again represented the company well and I sensed that there is movement in the bowels of the industry .......