Sorry guys I know we are starved for good news these days and at first this latest NR looks like great news. Unfortunately after reading into it I can't really see what all the excitement is about. In fact it seems like we have gone from a target of 50,000 by 2015 to ramping to a target of 44,000 sometime between 2012 and 2021. Unfortunately it gives no indication of when the target might be achieved. We could speculate based on the timeline to complete the provision of the additional Plant capacity and the drilling of an additional 35 - 40 well pairs from the six well pads and ramp up but I for one would not like to guess. Predictions are most welcome.

The main change in approach seems to be in the method of production from two pods instead of multiple discrete pods. That must be a huge cost saving. Looking at the expansion area we can also see that the phase 1 will be an expansion within the areas encompassed by POD1 and ALGAR to bring production to 44,000. This looks very good to me as my impressions were that each of these pods could probably only support 10,000 - 12,000 each with the rest of the pods supplying the bulk of the 50,000. Thing is it does not take us to 120% increase in the overall scheme as has been suggested and overall there is not much change.

It looks like Phase 2 of the project is expanding into PODS 4 & 5 and Phase 3 into the lower section of POD 7 to maintain the 44,000 over the lifecycle of the project. Seems management do not have any plans as yet for POD 6 which is probably just too far away to include in this scheme.

Well even after this news I am afraid, I am still pinning my hopes on a huge recovery of the bitumen price to save the day.

Cheers all and keep well

Den