simpson 1 02 10, page-12

The NT government has been providing funding/exploration initiatives for the past few years so it's very good to see CTP finally receive a piece of this. Now - if only the federal government would do the same to frontier onshore explorers especially given that importing petrol is slowly sucking the life out of the country.

At present I understand (dont quote me) around 45% net is imported, and this will spiral out to around 80% by 2010. The government has no trouble providing tax incentives for offshore oil/gas explorers in frontier basins but onshore its a different story. Most onshore energy funding is for geothermal which is great to see for numerous reasons (australia is estimated to have well over 800 years of known geothermal energy) but onshore oil/gas still lags.

Anyways back to CTP, in regards to negotiations the balls in ctp's court and if the current potential farminee negotiations don't progress any further, its good to know they do have other options at hand. Im sure the party currently in negotiations is aware of the circumstances and if they're serious they will progress, my gut feeling is that this is a very significant player in the australian industry given the ease of funding contribution and last few years of action in the sector ... and no, I'm not thinking santos or shell either (though anythings possible)

The main problem I see with larger organisations is that they often carry alot of dead weight and have lots of systems to go through prior to making a decision.... so the timeframe was relatively short for them to shuffle paperwork, analyse results and decide on whether they wanted to participate. (Given the results of Blamore, CBM001, and the financial commitment one would think they're serious and would fast track), but that being said its still at CTP's discretion.

On another note, very interesting to see simpson showing C1-C2 units at 300 odd metres. The question now is where is it coming from? It would be great to see a few wet fraction units appear as we get a little deeper. From memory some surface geochemical analysis over simpson in the past had provided some interesting results aswell so we're getting closer!

Next week should be interesting and id assume by weeks end we'll hear how negotiations stand and, simpson should start to show...