Que sera, sera, page-54

Simple. Meridian aren't the end customer of the gas. Eon is. In order to get Eon to sign up as a customer Meridian needed to provide them with a complete package of where the gas was coming from: regas plant, shipping, LNG, pipeline transport, gas supply.

Many of the other prospective tollers (we know GNF, AES, and Gunvar at least) are their own customers so they aren't pressed by customers for a timeframe on signing.

As for the EPC contract being something people might want to wait on, without waiting the tolling agreements would have contained a clause stating that we get to renegotiate pricing if the EPC contract is over a certain price. Signing before the EPC locks you out of the market for other providers yet means you may end up paying more in the end by going with us.

And before the question is asked why the EPC would wait until FERC; I've already mentioned before that the EPC contactor with us had been talkin to FERC to ask if there were likely going to be any additional environmental requirements which might effect the construction. They were told that the answers would come with the final EIS. No change from the draft means the planned EPC would have been fine to then sign.