minor background gas, page-26

All I was saying was that we will have to wait and see .

NSE is a punt at this stage but I'm surprised so few people are willing to take it given that it has un-farmed out prime Merlinleigh acreage which is closer to infrastructure as well as the Canning acreage and in-house technical expertise and cash in the bank .

I couldn't justify a big stake at this stage of a long term proposition but I cannot see too much downside .

Eventually the wider market has got to cotton on to the revival of onshore exploration brought about by shale techniques . That could happen as early as April when Beach start flow testing the horizontal shale wells in the Cooper .

I think the market has made a mistake in considering current onshore exploration as being exclusively shale whereas in practice it's whatever they find when they drill holes :-
- extensive but thin conventional reservoirs in contact with source rocks as in the Southern Georgina as well as shales there .
- thick conventional reservoirs of varying sizes up to large
- tight gas basin centred gas accumulations
- conventional reservoirs which were previously rejected due to uncommercial flow rates which can be commercial with horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing
- helium as well as gas oil and condensate
- even mineral deposits as well as hydrocarbons
- coking coal , thermal coal
- oil shales (harvested by retorting or heating in situ) rather than oil in shales harvested by horizontal drilling and fracturing .

Exciting times !