RE: Ithaca suspends 14/18b-17 well at AthenaGive it a rest. You sound like your about to jump off a roof.
The debt financing is for the 2P gross reserves (28 mmbo) already found that will not change. This last well was a well that if successful could have potentially doubled the current 2P reserves by proving up the southern extension if it existed. In which case the debt financing would have had to be increased beyond what they are currently negotiating with RBS for the current reserves development. If you look at the seismic interpretation on their presentation then you can understand what they were going after if not then you are just guessing as to what is happening and where it is occurring.
The last 3 wells were all exploration wells. In the N. Sea that is usually a 1/5 – 1/10 probability of success. What did you expect? Hope for the best, but expect the worst when it comes to exploration.
Too bad they didn’t hit with this well, but 28 mmbo of reserves are still there and they will still get developed hopefully at the end of 2009. If the next 3 Athena wells (D, E, I locations on page 13 of presentation) are successful then the Athena reserves will increase well beyond the 28 mmbo that they are now. And unlike the last well, these are appraisal wells that have a 50%+ probability of success as opposed the last well in somewhere between 10-25%.
I read the same type of posts when Oilexco was just delineating the Brenda field and they missed extending the potential NW area oil accumulation. Well no ones complaining today as it pumping 20,000+ bod.
I heard the same comments when OIL missed 5 of the next 6 exploration plays after Brenda to find the Shelley oil field. Then the same whiners praised management as champions.
Then when OIL couldn’t extend the Shelley field to the east after 3 months of drilling the same posters labelled them as bums and the sky was falling then too. These same posters will be jumping for joy when that field comes online later this year at 10-20k/d and the SP moves up b/c of it.
The problem today is that everyone in this market is looking for fast money and not willing to wait for anything.
If what IAE is doing isn’t good enough for your timeline then just sell and move on.