Thought I'd share this postive change of view.
I was looking over my notes back in July and a letter I sent previously to Dr. Hession regarding the press release on the wells where they announced the Wahoo suspension as well as the status of Bobcat and Raptor.
At that time there was no mention of problems in Raptor with the Orubadi shale and the well was "progressing slightly slower than first estimated". This was actually excellent news at the time but MH bungled the delivery, starting off with the bad news about Wahoo. Then he failed to present Raptor in the positive light it was in at the time. Although it is a very late arrival, Raptor is now finally at the doorstep of the target zone and is preparing to run 7" casing, as we have just been told. They never mentioned sidetracking Raptor back in the July update, whereas at the time Bobcat had already been sidetracked TWICE. The 7" casing that Raptor is about to run is an OK size casing if they get it to TD.. If they stick it high, they may have a 5" liner contingency to enable them to drill to TD if they have a very short distance to go. Or they could drill with 5" casing to TD out of the 7", if the connections are designed for that. That's been done elsewhere. But drilling through 5" casing while possible, may not be very feasible given these formations. It just all depends how shallow they stick the 7" if that ugly scenario visits us. In any case for Raptor, that is about the worst likely thing to happen in the near term other than finding a dry hole.
But again, connecting the dots of the two reports on Raptor, I have not heard any talk of problems with the Orubadi shale in this well. So the fact they have not mentioned that is a big positive or they just selectively omitted it. But clearly they ran into some kind of problems because that was quite a while back. In any case I'm a little more positive on Raptor now than yesterday after looking back, mainly because of the absense of Orubadi problems. Note that they did NOT mention testing any surprise shallower interval. So I think we have to assume that did not happen.
Bobcat on the other hand - has nothing positive. It stinks. With two sidetracks already way back in early July and NOW they are still fighting, it sounds terrible. I'm wondering if they restarted very shallow (essentially a new well). My base expectation is they will have to give up at some point. This seems like pulling a rabbit out of hat, that you just pulled out of another rabbits mouth. Or they might do another Wahoo type suspension.
Lastly with Wahoo parked, IMO they should be in no hurry to get back to it unless the idle rig is burning a hole in their pocket. Clearly they bit off way more than they can chew. They should get at least the first Antelope well finished and done right, before starting any new wells or restaring Wahoo. Then with as much concentration and attention as they can muster, they can consider restarting Wahoo or any other exploration well.
They need to digest all of these mistakes and figure out what actually works and WHO inside or outside of the company can drill a well right. Then they can resume. At least if I were running the show, that's what I'd be doing based on the poor performance to date. Yes it is a no-brainer that it is poor performance when you provide 60, 90 and 90 day estimates and exceed all 3 wells by well over 100% with no end date yet in sight. Use or flush.