Howdy all,Fairly quiet on the NWE pages... not surprising as...

Howdy all,

Fairly quiet on the NWE pages... not surprising as there's not really much to talk about... it feels a bit like "tick tock" time... everyone's waiting for the drill rig announcement and subsequent spudding of the next well... which then means months of news flow with more posts to write, read and analyse. Good times to look forward to and will be well worth the wait IMO.

Just thought to comment on a couple of things.

Volume has come right off the boil lately... most days not even breaking 10m... in fact yesterday was only 2.5m traded... what's that 0.03% SOI? Absolute bugger all. And today.... half that at ~1.3m as I write... but check out the volume build up at 4.6/4.7... it's prime to break out IMO. My gut is telling me we will see a drill rig announcement in the coming days... could be tomorrow... likely early next week I reckon. If that is the case we could see spud just after Xmas break... as from memory it was just 1 week from drill rig announcement to spud for LD-1.

Not sure if anyone has been keeping an eye on the Top 20 list. I have and TBH not much happening in terms of big movements... it's just been quiet accumulation. Just checked today and we have the Top 20 now breaking 44%. Remember back in April this year it was 34%... and we know from recent NWE IR presos the Top 40% hold ~50%. in the last week we've had HSBC @ #2 add 5.5m... and our new favourite McCusker @ #11 add 4m.

But interestingly, we now know Hancock (Gina R) holds ~3% in NWE and is officially the 2nd largest holder after MIN... so Hancock must be hidden in either the no.2 or 3 nominee accounts. HSBC or Citicorp. What is interesting to realise is back in May this year, the nominee accounts in the Top10 held ~283m shares... as of today... it's ~777m... so to me... and this aint rocket science... this says we have had some significant accumulation by some big players in the market.. which makes me think... don't trade NWE... just sit tight, be patient... and the re-rate will come.

Just look at what is happening with our neighbours STX & WGO... and of course BPT now sitting on the sidelines... what they will do next intrigues me. I have been running a number of market scenarios through my head and there are still so many unknowns... who are the big fish circling... who else could enter the PB consolidation play? And with what is happening over on the east coast gas markets... what could this mean for the policy stable WA markets? For e.g. I understand that Gina's recent Senex QLD acquisition will be significantly impacted... so I wonder if she pulls the pin on development there and decides to go all in on the PB instead. A very dynamic environment at the moment.

Either way, there is plenty more to play out here as well roll into 2023. A year that I believe will be truly transformational for NWE.

GLTA