Looking for News, page-12

Nine months slippage may well be correct - when both Cuadrilla and the Putinistas are saying the same thing, it’s probably a fair estimate.

The question is: “does it matter?” The gas isn’t going anywhere and the technology is only improving.

Generally, with a small e&p, cash is the critical path. But we’re cashed up for this development and carried for the next. In any event, shareholders large and small have made it clear in recent raisings that they are going to play this hand out.

So the critical path becomes regulatory risk. This time last year we were supposedly a year from flow tests and 37 months from the risk of a hostile government. Now we’re nine months from flow tests and, thanks to the snap election and the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, 50 months from the risk of a hostile government.

The slippage is disappointing but not in itself particularly serious.