RE:RE:RE:Maybe a silly questionThank you for taking the time to respond. Your response was both respectful and insightful.
After getting a little beaten up from others in my first post I took more time to review the presentation and saw the P10, P50 and P90 numbers. I realize I should have looked more closely prior to my other post. As you can tell I am not an experienced oil investor. The most recent management presentation does not say whether the the numbers reflect GCOS or CCOS. They simply say "prospective recoverable resources." Perhaps in an earlier report they discuss it in more detail.
At the risk of more criticism, let me ask what a fair $ value /barrel could be used if a commercial find was made. By this I mean, right after the point of discovery prior to the the hundreds of millions of investment required to extract. Also, how efficient has the stock market price been in the past after a successful commercial find has occurred.....ie does it typically get reflected fairly in the company share price or is there still a major discount for other uncertainties.
In reading your comments it makes me wonder how such a relatively small company as XOP can deal with the future costs associated with extracting the oil if a commercially viable opportunity was indeed found. Raising the capital as a 17% owner could be challenging. However, realistically would they not likely sell their stake at some point prior to that to another party who had deeper pockets (maybe Exxon). How much negotiating leverage would they have given it is known they are dealing from a challenging financial position. On the other hand, if there was a big proven commercial oil discovery, XOP could on the merit of that find raise needed capital....bank loan, more diluting shares, etc. This indeed would be a good problem to have for XOP.