looking at ndo last 2 qrts financial health, page-16

Hi Rawk,

Directors and exec management fees seem reasonable to me. No feeding at the trough here. My guess is that there are too many bodies and expensive ones at that.

The period of high expenditure associated with permit and seismic acquisition is over. The drilling campaign at Yakal and Tindalo is complete. No more drilling coming up. Galoc has started up and is clearly in the hands of the operators, as inept as they seem to be. The only thing that is on the books is the farm-out and I don't see that as a high expense operation nor one that requires alot of technical staff. The future belongs to the farminee who will likely drive the operational efforts in the deep water.

Employee ownership is too low for my taste. It used to be around the 12-13% level and now its closer to 4%. The longer term employees have a swag of shares from excercised options. Time to trim the expenses and give incentive to the newer staff that remain.

Regards,

OPT