Camdenbob,I don't believe in coincidence and for my money, it is...

Camdenbob,

I don't believe in coincidence and for my money, it is far too great a coincidence that they may have suffered a mechanical failure right at the point where they would normally stop to test a formation i.e. shortly after having drilled through into the next layer.

In normal circumstances you would drill until you had indications that you had exited the zone of interest (changes in gas levels, changes in hardness and composition of rock etc), then make sure that you were at least 3 metres into the next formation. This 3 metres allows for the use of the DS tool to make sure that your instruments can measure all formation characteristics over the entire zone.

I'm calling it a stoppage to test the primary zone, not a failure. And given that we have been testing this zone for at least 27 hours, I'd expect an announcement today.

Cheers

Badfish