It should be called Triangle gas, because there is 69Tcf of the stuff, which is a truly bizarre amount (only 10% may be recoverable, but still..). We had communications with the company, as we promised.

1) German listing. They were not aware that they had any, and this might surprise you, but for shares to be listed in Germany, they don’t need the company’s approval. We were afraid it can be used as a backdoor shorting avenue, and wonder about the motives of the people who did the listing (it’s listed in Frankfurt, München, Stuttgart, Berlin and the electronic Xetra, no less).

We remain on guard. There are no signs yet that German listings have been used to short the stock, but we know that it is possible. Another explanation is that it was done by people related to a European IR firm they had a couple of years ago. Their public might have had some problems trading bulletin board shares in the US.

It could also just be some broker seeking a profit. We don’t know.

2) We did argue for Joint-venture partners. This would speed things up comprehensively, as these wells seem to have a pretty low flow rate, so quite a few need to be drilled. For instance, Kennetcook no.2 flowed up to 60 mcf/d. That’s not a whole lot.

Having said that, it’s by no means certain that future wells will not flow at a substantially higher rate (the well location in by no means optimal yet), but that’s where a joint-venture partner comes in, to speed up the drilling. We have reasons to believe that this is indeed the track the company is on, and it’s a high priority. No doubt the Ryder Scott (third party) resource estimate, that fabulous 69Tcf, and the current energy climate, will have put TPLM on the map.

3) A partner could come pretty soon, and by year end, they hope to have been listed on AMEX. The commercial viability of the

4) We stand corrected. In a previous article, we wrote that the fully diluted share count would be close to 100M after the latest (considerable) financing. It’s 88M shares.

5) Announcing a Joint-venture partner might very well give the stock price another jolt, partly depending on which company it is. We remain optimistic about it’s long-term prospects, there could be really a whole lot of upside in the coming years if they can unlock even some of that 69Tcf at reasonable cost (but with today’s energy prices, that becomes less of a tall order by the day).

For people with longer-term investment horizon, accumulate on weakness seems the most sensible strategy to us.