This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of...

This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of Holymagiman.

Holymagiman and I are just back from a short trip to Alberta. It started off as a fishing trip, and somehow, we ended up in the Horseshoe Canyon in Alberta. This was a mighty interesting place, and the interesting thing is that the coal seam wells in Horseshoe Canyonare all dry.

That is right, there are dry coal seam wells in Alberta. Lots and lots of them. The Horseshoe Canyon coal formation in Alberta, Canada is an anomaly for coals. It is dry, for the most part producing no formation water. Therefore, no dewatering is required. In fact, the wells are severely damaged by any water influx.

Gas flows almost immediately, the wells are in the main part shallow, and operational and exploratory costs are therefore low, as compared to a conventional coal seam gas play.

Holymagiman talked to a few of the drillers, as is his habit and smoked a smoke or two of some excellent Jamaica Numba One with them.

And he asked them why there was no water in the wells, and the drillers had a good old chuckle at this, and one of them told us that there were a few misinformed folk around who seemed to think that every coal seam well should have water, and that it was a fact of life that some wells had water, and others did not, depending on the geology of the terrain.

And as the man said, “That’s why we are here sonny, that’s why we are here, because we know that that there gas and water don’t have to be always holding hands, like a couple of eighty year old newly weds . And that’s why we be here making the money, and them folk who be looking for water with their gas not be here, and that be the facts of life.”

And now we are back in Kingston, all the more knowledgeable from our experience, and feeling a lot better for it.

And so out thoughts turned to Eastern Star, for we had not given it too much notice in our sojourn in Alberta.

And it seems that one has to be keeping an eye on that little Eastern Star, for we barely took our eyes off it for a few days or more, and it has decided to climb down from its tree a little, so that it can come looking for us.

Well anyway, we are having breakfast here and everyone is here, including Aunt Maybelle Gracious Lady, from Glasgow.

And we have to hasten to add here that she comes from Glasgow, Jamaica and not from Glasgow, Scotland, for Glasgow, Scotland, is very very cold and Aunt Maybelle Gracious Lady suffers from lumbago in the cold and would not last too long there. Although one must add that the scots are nice in their own little way, what with their haggis and their chips with their chinkie.

Aunt Maybelle is still very upset about the dry well that Holymagiman and I had dug for her. She is one of those people who feel that all wells should have water, and she now wants to know where all the water has gone.

Well, as we see it, all that water has gone into the Eastern Star’s wells. They have a bit of water there, to be sure, but as this geology is very different from Horseshoe canyon’s, the more water there is in Eastern Star's wells,the better.

Of course, there are still some who do not realise this fundamental difference in the two regions, and worry and moan about why there is water in one set of wells and no water in the other, but, as Baboo Runchik says, it goes a long way to proving up Darwin’s theory of evolution of the human brain. That Charles Darwin sure was a very clever man, to be sure.

Baboo has checked, and Uncle Remus has double checked and there is one thing that we can be sure of. And that is that Eastern Star is not very good at reporting in a clear, unambiguous way.

We have read and re-read the last bimonthly report after we returned from Alberta, and we see that the company has this to say about the Bibblewindi 28H Lateral Production Well and the Bibblewindi 21H Lateral Production Well:
“The strong performance of this pilot to date has shown that it is drawing from a very large reservoir.”

So the average reader would WRONGLY assume that the pilot well is drawing from a very large reservoir of water.

Eastern Star should have reported it as “The strong performance of this pilot to date has shown that it is drawing from a very large reservoir OF GAS” because that is the true state of affairs.

And while we were chatting over our toast and fig and lemon marmalade, we mulled over another interesting issue. The family were never believers that the Eastern Star price was being kept down for any reason, even though we own 52 shares in it. Much to the contrary, we always believed that it was just market perception and whims that were keeping it down at the around the dollar mark.

However, as Uncle Tobias drew our attention to just now, there seem to be an awful volume of sellers recently, compared to the volume of buyers. When Eastern Star closed for the day, there were 2,079,444 buys as compared to 7,183,535 sells.

It may be something, it may be nothing, but the last time a similar situation occurred, when Eastern Star dropped in the presence of a very heavy sell side (of more than 12 million, if we recollect rightly) was just before the Santos purchase of Hillgrove’s stake in Eastern Star.

And now again, there seems to be developing a similar pattern of trade, with a very uncharacteristic large volume building up on the sell side, but at prices that are very much higher.

And so we sit and wonder what new development this is a harbinger of.

And as we sit and contemplate the comings and the goings, it is so much easier to appreciate things in the bliss of a Numba One in this rainy Jamaican morning.

Blessing of the Lord
MLA