They know what they have… "The Wei-1 well encountered 210 feet of hydrocarbon bearing sands in the Santonian horizon. The Joint Venture acquired wireline logs and extensive core samples from the Santonian, however, due to a tool failure downhole and a new tool not being available, oil samples were not obtained. The rock and fluid properties of the Santonian will now be analyzed by an independent third-party laboratory over the next 2-3 months to define net pay and a basis for the evaluation of this interval".
"oil samples were not obtained"...
Without physical evidence, how did they feel confident enough to put oil instead of hydrocarbons in the PR? IMO, they know exactly what the hell exists in the Santonian. Any competent well site geologist would have been able to see fluorescence on the cuttings and the well-log data would have also confirmed oil as well.
I get why they sent the data to a lab for extra confirmation, but still... and remember, with Kawa, they magically had lab analysis for the cuttings data mere days after the debacle that was the early March news release.
This whole situation is just a long drawn out embarrassment at this point. Anyone with O&G experience would know it shouldn't be this way, yet here we are.