Antelope 5 is done. A4 is drilling again

[katytrader]

Thanks Gator. JVOA probably states that OSH will be responsible for all material item reporting since IOC is too busy with social issues and getting ready for the 2014 YE reporting.

Someone said in a previous post that these kind of monthly drilling reports are required by the ASX, and therefore OSH has no choice.

Someone said they thought it might be required, but it's not, especially under the new ASX rules which I mentioned recently.  Have you read those?  Oops sorry; that time thing.  Also, if that were the case, why no updates for many other weeks while drilling has been going on.?

Per 18 Sept 2014 drilling report:  Oil Search does not intend to release weekly drilling reports on Antelope 4 but will update the market periodically, in line with the Company's continuous disclosure requirements.

katytrader

[Palm]

Getit, don't take being direct with dislike. I don't have any more time than you do, but I take the time in the evenings and weekends to stay on top of one of my major investments; no different than what anyone should do with a business you own. You like to respond to directness with someone being sensitive or defensive. I can assure you that's not the case. Being in the career I'm in and running both my own businesses and working for others I know I have a duty to thoroughly understand what I'm dealing with. Do a lot of reading, research and comparing, and what I see in IOC right now are some weaknesses in an industry where weakness gets you eaten alive. Calling management to task on some things doesn't mean overall I think they are doing a bad job. If I thought that, I'd be gone. But when someone doesn't perform as they should when it's very obvious, they need to be called out. These guys are big boys and they're not thin-skinned.

Doing basis DD really doesn't take that long when you have things bookmarked etc. With the availability of info literally at your fingertips today time is short for doing this stuff. You can skim, search get into some detail and be done pretty quickly, and still enjoy a bowl of ice cream without too much trouble.

I've praised management plenty, but I won't only do that and none of us should. They don't need us making excuses for them if they are doing things that they should. On this Ant 4 issue Total, OSH and the government and others were fully aware of what has been going on. IOC can't do/say nothing because you know it's going to get out eventually. Why not head it off and control the situation and paint it the way THEY want it instead of hiding behind a definition of "material" which is rather subjective? We also know that large shareholders are getting the info (most likely), so why let thought of "the worst" prevail and deal with all of the questions via email/phone etc.? Makes little if any sense.

[sageo]

Getit, don't take being direct with dislike. I don't have any more time than you do, but I take the time in the evenings and weekends to stay on top of one of my major investments; no different than what anyone should do with a business you own. You like to respond to directness with someone being sensitive or defensive. I can assure you that's not the case. Being in the career I'm in and running both my own businesses and working for others I know I have a duty to thoroughly understand what I'm dealing with. Do a lot of reading, research and comparing, and what I see in IOC right now are some weaknesses in an industry where weakness gets you eaten alive. Calling management to task on some things doesn't mean overall I think they are doing a bad job. If I thought that, I'd be gone. But when someone doesn't perform as they should when it's very obvious, they need to be called out. These guys are big boys and they're not thin-skinned. Doing basis DD really doesn't take that long when you have things bookmarked etc. With the availability of info literally at your fingertips today time is short for doing this stuff. You can skim, search get into some detail and be done pretty quickly, and still enjoy a bowl of ice cream without too much trouble. I've praised management plenty, but I won't only do that and none of us should. They don't need us making excuses for them if they are doing things that they should. On this Ant 4 issue Total, OSH and the government and others were fully aware of what has been going on. IOC can't do/say nothing because you know it's going to get out eventually. Why not head it off and control the situation and paint it the way THEY want it instead of hiding behind a definition of "material" which is rather subjective? We also know that large shareholders are getting the info (most likely), so why let thought of "the worst" prevail and deal with all of the questions via email/phone etc.? Makes little if any sense.

Palm- "Happy daze" to you ! Hope that ice cream was not "rocky road", but instead was "smooth sailing"....Ho,ho. Thanks for all the info you provide for us.

[Getitrt2]

Getit, don't take being direct with dislike. I don't have any more time than you do, but I take the time in the evenings and weekends to stay on top of one of my major investments; no different than what anyone should do with a business you own. You like to respond to directness with someone being sensitive or defensive. I can assure you that's not the case. Being in the career I'm in and running both my own businesses and working for others I know I have a duty to thoroughly understand what I'm dealing with. Do a lot of reading, research and comparing, and what I see in IOC right now are some weaknesses in an industry where weakness gets you eaten alive. Calling management to task on some things doesn't mean overall I think they are doing a bad job. If I thought that, I'd be gone. But when someone doesn't perform as they should when it's very obvious, they need to be called out. These guys are big boys and they're not thin-skinned. Doing basis DD really doesn't take that long when you have things bookmarked etc. With the availability of info literally at your fingertips today time is short for doing this stuff. You can skim, search get into some detail and be done pretty quickly, and still enjoy a bowl of ice cream without too much trouble. I've praised management plenty, but I won't only do that and none of us should. They don't need us making excuses for them if they are doing things that they should. On this Ant 4 issue Total, OSH and the government and others were fully aware of what has been going on. IOC can't do/say nothing because you know it's going to get out eventually. Why not head it off and control the situation and paint it the way THEY want it instead of hiding behind a definition of "material" which is rather subjective? We also know that large shareholders are getting the info (most likely), so why let thought of "the worst" prevail and deal with all of the questions via email/phone etc.? Makes little if any sense.

Palm, I appreciate your taking the time for all that additional comment.  By the way I was not referring to personal "dislike", but wondering and somewhat joking about dislike of disagreement.  I agree basically with everything you said here, and in particular the last paragraph about Ant 4 and their communications with the markets and investors.  I have criticized them myself in that area before.  I also have a great deal of appreciation for the work you do and your contributions to SHU and us in sharing it and in responding to things.  Of course, I'm sure you know I won't hesitate to disagree and expect the same.  Let's just keep it civil and try to "get it right"; there's no ego involved.

Unless I happen upon something I think would be a positive contribution of interest not already out there, I hardly ever initiate a subject, either to praise or "make excuses" for IOC or to criticize or complain.  Of course it's difficult to find something in the latter category not already out there, it seems!  I almost always am responding to posts I think are wrong or unfair or needing clarification for the benefit of shareholders or other investors, including me and mine, or have questions about, especially of a negative nature.  I feel a strong obligation about that and put a lot of effort into it, sometimes I guess more than I feel like I should need to, and I guess most people would consider me pretty "direct" as well.   However, it is very important to me, even critical, and I never have the purpose of being vindictive.  I try to stay away from Yahoo for probably obvious reasons, but sometimes feel the need to check it out and respond to certain attacks on IOC, such as lately.  I'm not intimidated, but doing so right or wrong usually brings down the wrath of people like mspieks and Mikesioc.  Today, mspieks even came at me quoting you, which I actually had little disagreement with.  Thought you'd get a laugh out of that!

[Stavros]

Forget about who discloses information for a moment (YES it should have from IOC for crying out loud).

We need to know whether the Total Depth was deeper than expected. Is the reservoir thickness a positive or negative outcome relative to prognostications by IOC, OSH, GLJ?

[Putncalls]

How could the reservoir at A5 NOT be thicker than the most positive presented viewpoint? It came in higher than any other reference I know of. TD was about 400(scratching head on that) meters deeper than the water contact! They drilled that last thousand meters like they were cutting through butter. That is a lot different than the A4 story. I sense that IOC has a nerve exposed here.

[Stavros]

917 meters in about 25 says is relatively normal as I recall for the Antelope structure
120 feet per day

[jft310]

Newer rig makes a huge difference Ant 5 vs 4 . cutting through limestone is a bit softer than shale huh .

[petrengr1]

Forget about who discloses information for a moment (YES it should have from IOC for crying out loud). We need to know whether the Total Depth was deeper than expected. Is the reservoir thickness a positive or negative outcome relative to prognostications by IOC, OSH, GLJ?

It is a bit difficult to analyze the data when it is incomplete and inaccurate. IOC provided the depth of the top of the  zone in their Feb. 16, 2015 press release http://tinyurl.com/qgpe2t6 .
 They said Antelope-5 “has intersected the top of the reservoir at 1,534m at a position that was 230m higher than the operator’s reference case.” with a foot note that explained this depth is sub sea not drill depth. They did not provide the drill depth or the derrick floor elevation. It is customary to give the drill depth when speaking about the depth of a well but that is not what they provided.

Today the Oil Search drilling report  stated that the well had reached total depth at 2,453 meters. As is  customary that would be  drill depth. They further stated that “The drilling progress for the month was 917 meters.”  I do not know if they got this number from IOC or if they came up with it on their own. Here is what I think happened. IOC intersected the top of the reservoir at -1,534 meters sub sea. In order to confirm this they drilled two more meters before stopping drilling to set the 9 5/8” casing. We always set casing before drilling further into the reservoir. So the drill depth at the end of February would have been -1,536 meters sub sea. I think someone at Oil Search subtracted the -1,536 meters sub sea depth from the current drill depth of 2,453 meters and came up with the number of meters drilled (2,453 - 1,536 = 917). The problem with that is you can not subtract sub sea numbers from drill depth numbers. It is like apples and oranges. So this number is wrong. So how far did they drill? We can not figure that out without knowing the derrick floor elevation.

We might make an estimate of the derrick elevation. We know we are drilling west Antelope-2. If we look at the topographic map provided at the bottom of the SPA  http://tinyurl.com/l5ojk3q  ; we can see the elevation on Antelope-5 might be similar to or a little higher than Antelope-2. The elevation of Antelope-2 was 142.3 meters above sea level. Let’s guess that the elevation of Antelope-5 is 150 meters above sea level. That would make the top of the reservoir (1,534 + 150) 1,684 meters drill depth. The current drill depth is 2,453 meters so we can guess that they drilled about (2,453 - 1,684) 769 meters (2,553 feet). We know the top of the reservoir is at -1,534 meters sub sea and the gas/water contact is at -2,228 meters sub sea, so we have (2,228 - 1,534) 694 meters (2,277 feet) of gas column. We are guessing the bottom of the hole, T.D., is at (2,453 - 150) -2,303 meters sub sea. So that would mean they drilled the well about (-2,303 - 2,228) about 75 meters below the gas/water contact. That will give them room enough to get logs and cores across the gas/water contact. They will probably plug off the water zone before they begin the long term connectivity test. At this point I am assuming they will leave all of the open hole open (except for the water zone) for the connectivity test but that remains to be seen.

On Antelope-4 it looks like the top of the reservoir was somewhere around 1,986 meters drill depth. On Feb. 28 they were coring at a depth of 2,002 meters, so it looks like they started coring at the top of the reservoir. According to the GLJ map 3 it looks like Antelope-4 may be near the edge of high porosity dolomite and the high porosity limestone, so they may want a good look at the top few hundred feet of the reservoir to prove if it is or  is not present.

[Stavros]

Thanks as always Petrengr1