No need to be so dramatic, BTA's arent signed because all tollers were waiting for an EPC price so that they could lock in a firm price in the BTA rather than signing one, then having to amend it when the EPC price differed from what the BTA expected.
Meridian were an extraordinary case as they had to lock in their chain of supply at the same time to get their project the go ahead so they were happy to sign early.
You just need to look at it simply, they have a large amount of parties wanting to sign over 16mtpa of gas. If you believe they can get another 4mtpa over the line before april 30 then hold, otherwise sell. The period for BTAs to be realistically signed started Monday when the EPC was signed, it hasnt even been a week.
There were no cracks revealed at the AGM. They were mostly tight lipped on anything confidential and were very conscious on being quoted as to not over promise. Judging by one of their comments when he asked if we were from hot copper, they are very aware that what they say in conversation is likely to be posted on here, like it was at the last investor presentation where I and others posted comments which werent on the record, but ended up being expected news which did not pan out as promised.
Having been to the last 2 investor presentations and the AGM, the conversations at the AGM were a lot more on the record than previously. Thats not to say that they weren't informative, they answered everything that you would expect of them and did it so very knowledgeably, I know Siv and some others had some concerns over a few items that had not been commented on much publicly, but those concerns were heard and put to rest with confident dialogue.
Were near the end of planning the project, theres not a whole lot of news left to release. Its come to a point where it is largely out of the hands of management, Tollers know the EPC cost now, they know when FERC will allow construction to commence, now its up to them to finalize the arrangement of their own gas and make a board decision to sign a BTA.
The good news is most of the customers are more certainty of supply based rather than spot price based. MB did mention that even this week he was emailed by a new party asking if gas was still available, so there is demand despite the doom and gloom over the industry.
Theres been a shitload of work gone into planning the project, its easy to think that nothing happens some days when the shareprice just lingers, but they have an experienced team who've got everything lined up on time. Tollers wont sign BTAs until EPC pricing is known, EPC pricing couldnt be released until FERC was done and FERC couldn't be achieved any sooner. We're the 8th (or 9th???) company to make it to this stage of FERC, some lists had us expected somewhere in the 30's two years ago. A lot has been achieved in a small amount of time, quicker than any other company was able to achieve in comparison. The shareprice has no effect on if a BTA will be signed or not.
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