Pilko3, it's got nothing to do with being a 'real man', and...

Pilko3, it's got nothing to do with being a 'real man', and everything to do about investing sensibly. The guy who sells all his possessions and bets all his money on red at the casino is at least as stupid as he is brave, and contrary to popular sayings, I strongly believe that conservatism is rewarded more in the stock market than 'bravery'. Anyone who had a massive amount of their portfolio in this pre-results was taking on too high a risk relative to the reward. While the chance of success was 24%, not 10% as you state, it's still odds on failure and due to the market cap of Range (at 10p) it wasn't going to rise enough to compensate for your risk even on a strike. RMP would have risen more but was (and still is) heniously overvalued based on their assets. Investing is not about 'fun', it's about making money. If I wanted to have fun while gambling I'd go put some money on the football.

As for the second well, I've no idea, and I never even called a result on the first well, merely said it was too high risk to be 'in' before results. Needless to say that those who are buying in now are getting a better risk/reward deal than those buying in pre-results. More reward on a strike, less downside on a failure, and a working petroleum system has already been proved up. Range probably isn't a bad long term bet at these levels, though short term I'd wait until the dust has fully settled before jumping in. (by 'long term', I mean most likely a few months, where the anticipation about the first Herrera will be here, they'll be a bit more production from Trinidad, and the second Puntland well will be nearing completion- and then is probably the time to sell out again, pre-results, because at that point they'll be a large downside risk on a failure again).

Cham, Horn Petroleum are drilling another well to meet licence committments. That's part of their agreement with the Puntland government. If they didn't drill the second well, the licences would be revoked, and HRN as a company would have nothing. They've got nothing to lose by drilling the second well really. They may well be bullish on the possibility of finding oil but don't interpret the second well as evidence of this. Plenty of companies have drilled second, and even third wells in their blocks and found nothing. Look at AIM: DES (Desire Petroleum). They drilled 6 wells and didn't find anything at all.

Mrposhman- the problem with your interpretation of the delay in testing is that they found this potential payzone AGES ago. They could easily have flown in testing equipment in time for the end of the drilling. I've never known any oil company do things this way round and in my opinion it's very poor management. Private investors place a high time value on their money and will now have to wait months until results are known. That was never going to lead to anything but a large drop.

As for your example of shallow wells that flowed decently, I haven't got time to research your claims, but yeah, sure, it's possible. But it's a fact that shallow payzones usually have lesser flow rates because there's less pressure. Missing the primary targets isn't a good sign no matter how much positive spin you want to put on it. It's the primary targets that were going to contain the most oil, and they'll need to be a lot of oil in Puntland to make it worth employing all the security and building the pipelines that will be neccesary- in other words, to make the project commercial.

Probably a decent enough buy in the 6-7p level though. Just gotta wait for the next hype wave to kick in then offload again.