land prices surge in us shale oil fields

I was somewhat bewildered by the relative strength in MPO's sp this week. Then I read the FT artice http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b756b9b6-2835-11e1-91c7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1i0lS5xng and the crystal ball starts to clear.

A random dip into this article - "Chesapeake oil acquired 1.25 million acres of the Utica Shale in Ohio over the 18mths to July 2011 at average price of $1400 per acre and in Nov 2011 joint ventured some of this at $15,000 per acre."

We are sitting on 1.4million acres of Uttica Shale in Quebec and 62,000 acres of prospective shale in Bakken and Wolfcamp. The Quebec acreage is after we relinquished 700,000 acres of unprospective land. Guessing, at a value of $2000 per acre for 1.462 milion acres gives a value of $2.924 billion - or our old favourite of over $12 per share.

Big unknown is the Quebec moratorium - but I am optimistic over the outcome. As an asset play, we are very attractive and it might have been noticed.