In the meantime, MRO's rating is raised by Moody to 'one step...

In the meantime, MRO's rating is raised by Moody to 'one step shy of investment grade':

"• Moody's raises Marathon Oil's (MRO) rating one notch to Baa1, a step shy of investment grade, with a stable outlook, seeing the expected growth in MRO's U.S. oil plays easing its exploration costs and improving its capital efficiency"

I haven't seen the report but MRO might comment on it in its forthcoming conference call. The EFS focus might be something to do with the rating upgrade.

If so, AUT should start to enjoy a bit of shine from that.

Also, the MRO operations are very material to AUT and having a near investment grade operator takes a bit of risk out of AUT.

It sounds like the June production was depressed (did not grow as much) because of MRO re-allocation of rigs to drill other acreage to hold by production - we knew that that would happen but we did not know that they would return so quickly to our acreage, and also because of closing down some of the older wells for installation of gas lifts.

As to 'soft commodity prices' - sure, we saw them, tell us something that we didn't know, but we've had a month of hardened prices and the current quarter is looking good at this stage.

How much do they pay those guys?? It makes you wonder whether some of them could read and understand the instructions to make mashed potato.