the key differentiator

After 8 years and spending over $100m, CTP did not get a single drop of oil or a puff of gas until Dalton came along. So, you can’t say time or money was the factor. The fact is, one key factor stood between success and failure. And that factor is technology. The key differentiator is not Dalton, but the technology he used.

Horizontal drilling was the technology Dalton employed to recover the oil. The Surprise area, our best hope to-date, requires the technologies developed for unconventional oil and gas fields. They include: 3D seismic, horizontal drilling, hydraulic fracturing and accelerated cooking. They will make the difference between success and failure, or between a small success and a huge success, or in traders’ terms, a 2-bagger from a 50-bagger. But, technology in itself is useless unless it is understood and people available to manage and use it.

Cottee, Herrington and Dalton have experience with these technologies through their association with CSM and shale gas development. Horizontal drilling has proven to be successful and I wish to remind people it was Dalton who first convinced the Board to take this step. To maximise CTP’s potential, we may need to harness more of the unconventional extraction process.

With the key differentiator, being the unconventional extraction process, and Cottee experience with it, we have hope. The alternative is 40 years wandering in the desert of Central Australia.