This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of...

This is Mr Lincoln Augustus, first second cousin of Holymagiman

Another warm Monday morning in Kingston and we are having a long lie in after spending all of Sunday helping to plan the Rebel Salute Roots Reggae Festival next month. Going to be a whole heap of people there and Mr Tony Rebel sure won’t like to be letting them down, so we have had to start all the planning nice and early, just to get things running exactly to plan when things really begin to matter.

And planning is so very important in all aspects of life, and especially so with the big business of making money, especially among friends, and that is what Uncle Remus always tells us. And it is an undeniable fact of life that in a group of businessmen, if one makes money, then the others in the group make money too, to a lesser or greater degree.

But just as we were considering this, our old friend 'Moo Moo' Ojay came wandering by and sat down for a smoke an a Red Stripe and started telling us the story that he had heard about Mr Lennie Barker, who has the fields twice removed from Holymagimans double cropping venture.

Now Holymagiman gets a fabulous double crop because his fields are well watered from some little underground streams, and the shoots come out plump, and the leaves are heavy, and everybody knows that the water flows under those fertile fields, just like the underground Hector and Cave Rivers in the central limestone part of this island.

Seems that Lennie Barker has found some big underground clear water streams running under his land and has started proving up reserves of clean water for the proposed water bottling plant that he and Wassim Sotsano , the rich Indonesian from New Orleans, are planning to put up on the block.

Seems that Lennie Barker has been coveting the next door fields of Widow Milly, of which he had a one third share anyway, as he has somehow found out that the widow’s fields have vast rivers of water running under it. Gosh, he could start a million bottle a day drink bottling plant in that factory, no problems at all if he could just get his hands on that water of widow Milly’s.

It seems that the widow Milly was a rather simple trusting soul. Good farmworking stock who looked you straight in the eye, called a spade a spade and a person who was brought up to only expect to find potatoes in the potato patch.

Lennie, on the other hand was a city slicker who has somehow drifted into the land and is a person who it is rumoured expects to get cauliflowers and apples and pears and truffles in his potato patch even though he had barely deigned to plant a few eyes of potato grudgingly.

And he had convinced widow Milly that there were rivers of water under her land and that he would drill her wells to get this water if she could pay him for the effort. She was keen, he was mean, she didn’t have the dough, he was well in the know, so he finally convinced her to give him a third of her share of the land in return for the wells being drilled by him. Money being hard to come by, she agreed and the deal was struck.

So Lennie looked over this land and drilled a few wells. And being kind of considerate, he drilled the wells right on top of the barren hill to the north, so as not to disturb the happy chickens that were playing in the lush green fields below, where the corn grew yellow and tall, the watermelon red and fat and the blueberries a brilliant blue. Most thoughtful fellow, that Lennie, and all the chickens loved him for that.

And somehow, surprisingly, all the wells did not hit any water, and Lennie seemed sad and the widow was devastated, but a deal was a deal and Lennie was given title to a third of her property.

So Lennie being Lennie, it is said that he then convinced the widow’s deadbeat nephews and nieces and in-laws and all other collective no-hopers and some shrewd carpetbaggers who rode into town that they had a legitimate claim in her property and somehow or other, the lawyer Reggie "The Rat" Blacksmith convinced the court that they had some claim or other to her land according to the translations of the Magna Carta written in the Stone of Destiny. All very legal, you see. So the courts gave all and sundry a piece of the widow’s land while the ghost of her husband wandered around the stables in pain and despair, as it saw all his hhard work being diluted away.

So what is going to happen is that while Lennie Barker’s share in the widow’s land will proportionately drop, brothers of his who initially were involved in the water production in his land will be running widow Milly’s land. Widow Milly has already been effectively stymied because she is a dissenter and Lennie has now got people who had the same motives as him controlling the widows ex-lands. Brilliant old Lennie.

And perhaps Lennie and his cohorts will make an offer for the widow’s ex-land before the strike any water in their drilling and any offer will seem to be a good offer to all the other new no-hoper owners (apart from Lennie’s brothers and the couple of carpetbaggers) and to widow Milly, who will only be so glad to get a little more than the whittled down value of her once valuable land.

So, to cut a long story short, it seems that Lennie will eventually get full control of that which he had coveted at a price so ridiculous in hindsight that will probably push widow Milly into the spare grave next to her husband’s on top of that there barren old hill with the non-flowing wells.

And who knows, lennie may drill then and find those rivers of water, for rumor has it that his kluck has never deserted Lennie when the chips were down and things had to happen.


And Lennie, being Lennie, will most probably offer his brothers who were once involved in his land and who are now involved in running widow Milly’s land directorships in the water bottling factory with big fat pays and lot and lots of long dated just out of the money options to buy shares and there will be much cheer and goodwill and happy slappings of the back, because friends will always be friends in the quest to building the big picture.

And so there is a happy ending to "Boo Boo's" tale and that is just right because all fairy tales must have happy endings.

But I talk too much of mundane things of no importance and the sun is warming up and so I must be off to do a spot of fishing with Holymagiman.

But I have to comment on what Mr Second says that Mr Russell Langusch said, if I understood it right;

If we got it right, Mr Langusch is supposed to have said:

“- The CSG coreholes in PELs 427 and 428 were drilled to depths below which there was little or no prospectivity for coal seam development. If ESG and OIP had believed there were coal targets deeper, the coreholes would have been drilled to intersect them.”

But we feel that surely the idea of the coreholes was to seek the best prospective regions to drill, regions where there was great prospectivity for coal seam development.

It appears to us from Mr Second's posting that Mr Langusch is telling us that if ESG and OIP had believed that there were coal targets deeper, then they would have drilled those holes deeper.

SO, IT APPEARS TO OUR SIMPLE MINDS THAT ESG AND OIP KNEW THAT THERE WAS NO MORE COAL PROSPECTIVITY BELOW THE SHALLOW LEVELS THAT THEY DRILLED.

So if they knew that there were no coal targets deeper and they had a drill rig that could drill to a thousand metres and more, why did they not find an area where they knew there was great prospectivity for coal seam development?

But we are simple minded jamaicans who know little about mining or drilling or the bright city lights and so we just sit here and smoke the smoke and drink the drink and think the thoughts and ask the irrelevent questions that exposes our ignorance in all its naked glory.

And so you can just imagine our confusion when we read the following that Mr Second says that Mr Landusch wrote in his e-mail:

“ It MUST BE REMEMBERED THAT CSG EXPLORATION IN PELS 6, 427 AND 428 IS AT A VERY EARLY STAGE WITH LITTLE KNOWN ABOUT THE COAL SEAMS IN THE AREA. It is not an analog to ESG’s projects to the south in the Gunnedah Basin.”

So we sat awake all night think how both ESG and OIP forgot that they remembered that CSG EXPLORATION IN PELS 6, 427 AND 428 IS AT A VERY EARLY STAGE WITH LITTLE KNOWN ABOUT THE COAL SEAMS IN THE AREA.

SO IF LITTLE IS KNOWN ABOUT THE COAL SEAMS IN THE AREA, THEN HOW DID THEY COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT: “THE CSG COREHOLES IN PELS 427 AND 428 WERE DRILLED TO DEPTHS BELOW WHICH THERE WAS LITTLE OR NO PROSPECTIVITY FOR COAL SEAM DEVELOPMENT.”

And if they knew that the core holes that they drilled had little or no prospectivity for coal seam development, then it apears to our ignorant minds, for we are not versed in high flowing matters such as these, that ESG and OIP may have made a tiny mistake when they tell us that csg exploration in pels 6, 427 and 428 is at a very early stage with little known about the coal seams in the area.

And if little is known about one area and a lot is known about ESGs projects in an adjacent PEL area, and if , as appears to be the case, two coreholes were put in with such little little knowledge about the coal seams in the first area, then the family feels that it would perhgaps appear most logical and appropriate to drill the two core holes at least as deep as the ESG coreholes in the Gunnadah Basin so as to get a better understanding of the area and, who knows, to perhaps intersect good coal seams that the drilling operators “knew little about.”

But it was not done and the coreholes were stopped at about 500 metres and everyone, as far as the companies were concerned, thought that a good job had been well done with the exception of a few odd bods here and there who should be ignored anyway, and one can only sit back and ponder as the reasons why the wells did not go deeper. But our thoughts bear no weight for we are but uneducated Jamaicans who are not at all versed in any facets of any matters financial, geological or social.

Mr Hardmano asked:
The fact that 7 months after the drilling in March and April we still have not seen gas desorption data or any statement of gas content for Kurrabooma is AMAZING .. and has lead me to conclude that there has been a deliberate "go-slow" in the OIP leases.

The answer he got was:
“- The desorption results have not been received back from the lab yet. With all the current CSG activity there are huge delays having samples analysed and only 2-3 laboratories perform such work.”

It was while we were reading this that Baboo started telling us the story about some refugees who are sitting in some Indonesian camps for over five years while some other refugees have managed to fast track their applications big time. It appears that Baboo’s great grand forth uncle is one of those poor souls in Indonesia and he has apparently been promised by your Prime Minister Mr Kelvin Rudd (by an express post letter from Buckingham Palace with two pounds and fifty pence postage stamps stuck on the back, where he has just pledged undying allegiance of Australia to the Queen, in Mandarin , Yiddish and Hindi) that the Queen will send the old man a 100th Birthday card in response to the Green Party asking for aid for him. We think that is a jolly good show, and that should keep the old codger happy for the many more months he is going to spend in Indonesia, and as he is only 98, he is most happy that he will be getting a 100th birthday card now,and hopefully another one when he actually turns 100. Hopefully the cards both won't be from the same printing run , showing the queen on one side and her cougars on the other.

We once heard a saying that there are people in the ranks who will stay in the ranks. Why? Because they do not have the ability to get things done. I suppose those people who rise above the ranks have the ability to make sure that things get done....or to make sure that things don’t get done, if that has to be the case. who knows, and for that matter, who really cares?

Anyway, Lennie has promised us two dozen bottles of that underground water and that has made us very happy and we think he is a jolly good fellow too, and so we are only going to write good things about him from now on.

And as the play develops, sooner or later, the little fish OIP will be swallowed by the big fish swimming by.

So, to make a précis of what has been written above for the benefit of those of you who like to read a précis, and to put everything in a nutshell so that nothing important from above is left out, we believe that Lennie is a jolly good fellow, and that Mr Kevilin Rudd is a jolly good fellow, and the Queen is a jolly good fellowlady and Baboo Runchik’s great grand forth uncle is a jolly good fellow and to all of you and them, much blessing of the Lord

MLA