They had a plan - a serious deal to farm into Santos' country.
However, Australia's answer to Pemex decided (sensibly) that that materiality be damned and they were going to punch holes in the Cooper themselves wherever a mmbl of oil or 20 bcf of gas was likely to be found. So at the last minute, Santos said 'No thanks' to Beach ... after Beach had done their very chunky capital raising.
We are now in Plan B.
If Plan B involved juniors, a deal could have been done by now ... and by my count, there is no inner-ring acreage left, except for Stuart's Panning gas in PEL90 - and Stuart want to do that deal with Santos, not Beach (Stuart and Beach are in an arm-wrestle to be the no 1 junior in the Cooper, so Stuart's price for Beach is a bit higher ... 3:1 for Harpoono and Saintly is just unbelieveable).
If Plan B involved a takeover, they should have moved already on Cooper, Roma, Lion or Great Artesian.
Me, I think that the Enterprise float may have distracted certain members of Beach's executive team at a time they should have had their eye on the main game.
Ian Whitchurch
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