What I think. FWIW

[CAC]

Actually, I think it would be appropriate to repeat here my previous post of Dr Hession's comments on this subject: I think Dr Hession's comments on the subject have some value: "I will then come to the capturing the upside, the very, very important fact InterOil has been a very successful explorer, the most successful explorer in PNG." "Now moving on, the upside. This is a part of the business that really also excites me, because I do believe we will find more gas. I do believe that also, we'll be very, very happy with the appraisal program around Elk/Antelope. Why? Why do I believe that? Again, I'm going to talk to you about delivery team. I brought in a team from -- probably got century’s worth of experience actually when I add it up -- people who are experienced explorers and experienced development teams. They've worked with companies like Shell, like BP, like Arco, actually Exxon people. People from my personal network and from the network of people that now work at Interoil. What did I do? I asked those guys, I gave them a clean [indiscernible] -- I said, "Go away, and tell me what you think about this resource. And go away and tell me what you think about this exploration program." How I know? I've got [indiscernible]reports and geo [indiscernible] reports telling about the resource, but I wanted my own independent verification of what we were looking at. The resource itself, Elk/Antelope. I worked with people who have defined these mega-projects and these mega-resources before, and I asked them to tell me what they thought they saw. Well, they came back with nothing but a glowing report on this discovered resource. I also got an exploration team together, this exploration team includes people -- sat on the global committees, as I said, the BPs, and Shells and Exxon, and they've come back and told me this is a world-class exploration province, and in fact, a world-class gas province. That started to give me more confidence that I can come out today and tell you how happy I am to be the Chief Executive Officer of this very exciting company. What have we done about that? Now we're confident -- now I'm confident that we've got a world-class gas province. As part of this company's portfolio, we've initiated a multi-well program. Now, the track record is as I said before, InterOil has found the biggest gas field in Southeast Asia for 20 years. I mean, that is not a particularly shabby record, that's a pretty good record we've already got. We are recognized as the biggest and best explorers in PNG, and we're going to do more of it. And we're going to make sure that we understand this province that we're working in. So what we've done is we've contracted 3 rigs at this moment in time, and they're all assigned to various prospects, and I'll talk through that in a moment." "So I'll take you through the exploration. There is a series of slides there, we're talking through Slides 19 to 23. I won't go through the slides in detail, but I'll give you the headlines. Operations are underway, site preparation's underway, and rigs are being mobilized to site. So Wahoo, it fits the PPL 236. One of the more significant things about Wahoo is its close proximity to Moresby, 167 kilometers from Moresby. It's near infrastructure. It's a very exciting, significant multi-TCF gas prospect, and it's something we're looking forward to drilling in the very, very close future. Raptor, that's a PPL 237. That's Slide 20. That is 10 kilometers west of Antelope. Now there's something that I learned in my days working with the Shells and the BPs is one tends to find hydrocarbons in close proximity to discovered resources. So 10 kilometers west of Antelope, we've also got another multi-TCF resource prospect. I have that looked at. I've at Wahoo looked at by renowned globally significant explorationists, and they tell me these prospects would rank in any company's portfolio in any mega major's portfolio. Bobcat 238. That's on Slide 21. That sits between Antelope and Triceratops. It sits between 2 existing discoveries. So what we're looking at is a world-class exploration province. What gives me more confidence about this, I talk about independent verification a lot, I talk about delivery a lot. What we see is independent verification from the GCAs -- sorry, from the Gaffney Clines of the world to the GLJs, independent verification of a team that I've brought in -- and independent verification, I think, comes from the fact that these assets have been sought by a number of the highest-quality oil and gas companies on the planet, the mega majors. They covet these assets, and we are very, very pleased to be owners of 3.8 million acres that surrounds these assets and include these assets." "Equally, we need to understand that the Wahoo, Raptor and Bobcat are going to be discoveries." (not appraisal wells) "I mean, their exploration, exploration will succeed and we feel positive about it, but also let's be clear: exploration wells do fail, yes." "I think I mentioned earlier, one tends to find gas and hydrocarbon accumulations around existing accumulations, and we've identified a series of prospects in PRL 15. And the way things are at the moment, we obviously think that some of those prospects are worth testing, and we'll be undertaking exploration at PRL 15, no doubt about it." Somehow, I feel sure that Dr Hession sees their POS as much greater than 10-20% in this situation and would strongly disagree with the applicability of Indoreservoir's 10-20%, or anything close to that, to them now. That's not 100%, or any guarantee, but I think those statistics are irrelevant to IOC in this situation at this time, especially after E/A and Triceratops.

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And there it is.  The inevitable "GetIt" statement that the poster who voices questions, concerns, criticisms of IOC...should have their motives questioned.  It's like clockwork. 

When did the need to "keep the public narrative positive at all costs" trump the concept of honest and objective evaluation (even when it results in something other than glowing optimism)? Not everybody wakes up in the morning with the singular goal of..."making sure I say nothing that could possibly be used by the shorts".  Sometimes people just say what they honestly think.  If it's good...so be it.  But if it's not...that's okay too in my book.