Or perhaps it could go the other way, as this is the only...

Or perhaps it could go the other way, as this is the only foothold they have in the rapidly growing WA market that is starved of gas they may lob a takeover of Arc when the dust settles. It would cost them nothing as they could borrow the money and pay the interest out of cashflow. Org has seen the stunning success of the new exploration techniques (4 wells out of 5 came in) on the Perth Basin and must be wondering what will happen when applied to the Canning in April.

This is what Eric recently said about it:

MD Eric Streitberg
What we’re seeing so far in the Canning Basin is very exciting. It is the first time
the Basin has been looked at using modern exploration techniques and we have
identified some very large prospects. It is a big challenge given the size of the
Basin and the numerous petroleum systems involved but we will be carrying out a
thorough and systematic exploration program that will give us the best chance of
success.
We’re on track to commence our exploration program in the Canning Basin in late
April 2007. We will use Rig 18 which we have under long term contract. We
have enough wells to drill in the Perth Basin that we might have trouble squeezing
all of them in before we go to the Canning. We’ve announced the first exploration
well in the Canning program on the shallow Stokes Bay prospect, but which also
has a deeper prospect called Valentine. The Stokes Bay shallow section is a
follow-up of an existing oil and gas discovery and the deeper Valentine prospect
has a similar geological structure to those that produce large quantities of oil and
gas in other basins, in particular the North Sea. Although it’s a reasonably high
risk well both prospects are well defined with a very good seismic signature.