what would the cash be end of august , page-21

I suspect that Cooper were totally blindsided when the last Indonesian program came up with just sand. If you look at the lack of drilling action scheduled for the months after Gurame, the build up of cash, the fact that the CEO had taken leave at the very time the results were due out, the CEO's big pay packet, all suggest to me that Cooper were expecting that the second half of 2008 would be full on and all about progressing Gurame towards production.

I know that auto had doubts about the quoted 75% probability for Gurame and that dusters are par for the course but why leave such a long gap in the drilling program, why build up such a warchest, and why pay the CEO as if he heads up a company going places fast.

I saw Mike Scott present at a conference a couple of months ago and thought at the time the story he was trying to sell about COE post Gurame was a tad lame. He did say at that conference that they were astounded that they found absolutely no hydrocarbons when they were only several hundred metres from a "producing" well.

I continue to hold a small amount of COE as part of a sector portfolio. They need to come up with a Plan B or Mr Scott will appear to be better at drilling shareholders than wells (which was not his original intention I am sure).