"our view of IOC vision: discover gas, sell it to a Major and return excess cash to shareholders"
Funny, when I riding to the airport in Houston with one of the IOC BoD's, he mentioned that he thought the above outlined by MS was also a very good idea??!!
Art - The fine print from the Management Discussion and Analysis states:
Further to the collaborative program with OSE, we with PRE and other partners will progress plans to acquire two further appraisal seismic lines in the Triceratops field to further define future drilling targets.
If I remember correctly, PRE is known for their off the charts exploration success due to very thorough seismic exploration before hand. Clearly PRE isn't going to be active until all seismic is done, including the above and the OSH/Total paid seismic. Also concerning the 2 rigs, I think it is possible that XOM may have locked up the rigs as part of the sell down negotiation. XOM right now only cares about PRL 15 and has committed to drilling additional wells there. Perhaps they told IOC that as part of the selldown deal, IOC needs to provide the 2 drilling rigs - just wild speculation on my part.