RE: news releaseRe-read it and the following bears repeating:
"The new lease included all the original project acreage and also granted
the company and MMI subsurface rights to the Springfield No. 5 and Herrin
No. 6 coal seams that were previously specifically excluded in the farm-out
agreement. These two seams alone are expected to increase the overall coal
bed methane reserves for the project.
APU originally acquired all of its Illinois rights when it purchased the
Penn Central Corporation which was in bankruptcy. The company and APU
believe that APU actually owns more rights, both shallow and deeper gas
rights, than have currently been identified in the three counties
surrounding the existing project. Therefore, the company and MMI negotiated
the inclusion of all of APU's rights in the new lease related to oil, gas,
coal bed methane, methane gas and other hydrocarbons, except coal, in
Williamson, Saline and Franklin counties in the state of Illinois as
currently known or as may be determined in the future.
The company intends to immediately begin researching and identifying
additional APU rights which will in turn grow the overall acreage and
reserve base of the total project without additional lease expense to the
company."
It appears that the report did not take into account any reserves from the 2 new coal seams that BPI got added to the lease this time. It will be exciting to see what happens when a hole gets punched into these seams.
As to the other potential reserves in the surrounding acreage, my thought would be, why waste time proving that stuff out rather than immediately starting to drill out what is already identified as proved non-producing reserves.
Also, it looks like the Albany Shale is an integral part of this project.