It's $60m for the business/licences, and $30m working capital to...

It's $60m for the business/licences, and $30m working capital to get the project kick started. We'd need to raise some working capital as, needless to say, no matter who owns the business, the workers on the rigs still need paying. The initial $30m cash injection would allow production ramp up and so would yield better returns to shareholders over a faster period.

Part of our initial 10% deal was a free carry on initial production, but if we were to take over the project, we'd obviously have to provide the working capital ourselves (as there's clearly no partner to 'free carry' us). The working capital costs are largely fixed in place- i.e. no matter how good a dealmaker Landau is, the workers still want paying the same amount, and the initial costs of drilling will still be the same. The unknown is how much SOCA would take to sell the business. They wanted $60m from Monitor, so maybe Landau could knock them down to $50m or so. But maybe we'll have to pay the full amount, as the oil price has risen from $80 to $120 since the initial deal making the whole thing more valuable.

To be honest even if we have to pay full price (i.e. $60m for the business and $30m for working capital), I'd still consider it a very good move. We'd then have Georgia and Trinidad as high-impact exploration plays, so while our exposure to Georgia would be slightly less, that's more than made up for by the security Trinidad offers combined with the excellent exploration prospects over there.

As much of Trinidad as possible please PL.

Ds, that sounds like a good deal to me. Hopefully PL is thinking along the same lines. I'd certainly have thought he is, given he said almost a year ago that if Range's market cap were higher he'd take the whole project- well our market cap is higher now, so now's the time for Range to capitalise on our good sentiment and increased asset value by bringing another prospect into the fold.