Slow news night for some reason,  Is everyone watching the NCAA tournament?

Saw this report about the year end construction progress of PNG LNG at 75%.  http://www.islandsbusiness.com/news/papua-new-guinea/457/png-lng-project-75-percent-complete-botten/.  What may have been most interesting was that OSL boosted exploration expenses from $60 to $144 million USD in the past year.  To what effect?  Not sure, but this is all they could say about their results:

"A strong reserves and resource base has been confirmed with proven and probable reserves increasing, fully replacing production." 

I expected they needed a bit more than past production to feed that new LNG plant.  Only replacing reserves would seem to be falling short of project needs.  But checking over at Oil Search it appears they have enough,  If I'm reading their table right..   http://www.oilsearch.com/Our-Activities/Reserves.html shows at the end of 2011 they had 5.4 TCF of 1P (1.57/.29 = 5.4 TCF),

An undated (?) story about PNG LNG at hydrocarbons-technology.com (http://www.hydrocarbons-technology.com/projects/pnglng/) had an interesting comment:

 "The Papua New Guinea liquefied natural gas (PNG LNG) project is a new gas project being championed by ExxonMobil, to realise the potential of three large gas discoveries in the southern and western highlands of the country. The integrated project includes gas production, processing and liquefaction facilities, as well as offshore and onshore pipelines.

"The new gas discoveries are the Hides, Angore and Juha gas fields, which are likely to have reserves approaching three to four trillion cubic feet. The three fields will supply gas for the Asian market via a pipeline to a two-train LNG facility, to be constructed at Napa Napa, near Port Moresby.

"The project will be underpinned by InterOil's Elk / Antelope field infrastructure (not yet fully proven). The facility will be supplied using a 36in (910mm) natural gas pipeline."

This project description appears not to have been updated for some time but I thought the highlighted comment worth a mention.

I guess what this all means is XOM doesn't need E/A for its two trains to operate, but as has been observed before E/A certainly  would be able to feed additional units at a very reasonable price

Getting late and March Madness coverage is ending.  Tomorrow's another new day.