Two year anniversary

[Getitrt2]

Naaah, 13 months of freaking arbitration which ended 10 months ago didn't cripple timelines.

You just made my point about poor management. What caused the arbitration delay? I think it was Hession selling 75% of E/A when InterOil didn't own 75% of E/A.  He made a deal with Total for the stake the minority investors owned when IOC did not and could not make a deal for the minority investors.  Furthermore, within three month, TOT and IOC changed the % and welcomed OSH into the project.  The arbitration didn't slow down certification.

You just made my point about conveniently overlooking the damage arbitration did to timelines delays, which  you view out of context.

If you want to point a finger at poor management, point it at Botten.  He was legally wrong and lost.   He caused the arbitration and the resulting timeline delays you assign to Hession.  OSH's poor management caused arbitration.

The arbitration didn't slow down certification. 

This an absurd claim  To make you correct, a yet not legally determined PRL 15 JV should have pressed on with the re-certification process?  This is laughable to even promote. TOT has been PRL15 Operator 4 months and 7 days.  That's it.

I don't think that is an absurd claim at all.

It was certainly within IOC's capacity to continue the drilling program knowing that regardless who its partner was to be IOC would be reimbursed.  Those holes had to be drilled and IOC had the money to drill them. The terms of any partnership with Boten had to be at least equivalent to the terms in the Total agreement,  That meant IOC would have had its costs recovered from OSH rather than TOT if OSH won the arbitration.  Instead, Hession appeared to stop and wait.  When he finally did get going he put a bad rig on A4.  And we are still waiting for testing results from A4ST.

Of course it is possible that Hession was constrained in what he could do by the first JVOA.  If in the original JVOA IOC ceded well operations on signing the PSA then there wasn't anything Hession could do if Total decided to wait the arbitration out.  That is of couse pure speculation as the JVOA, an attachment to the PSA, was never released.

So I'm caught between two working hypotheses.  First, a nefarious plot by major international business interests tied to Australia to delay Papua LNG.  Second, incompetance and/or hubris on the part of Hession. Either way the resource payment appears as distant today as it appeared two years ago when the PSA was signed.

IMHO, Art, these comments are even more absurd.  I have heard no information indicating Hession "put a bad rig on A4" knowing there was one much better available, and there were testing results from A4ST released on Nov 18.

I am also confident there are correct "working hypotheses" between your claimed extremes, and there is no way "the resource payment appears as distant today as it appeared two years ago when the PSA (sic) was signed".