Hi Glindway;
Actually Dick Gusella's game plan is to renegotiate Connacher's debt at some point in the future when Connacher has completed it's expansion project to 44,000 bbl/d. He is an ex investment banker so I'm sure that he is familiar with all of the possibilities open to Connacher vis a vis it's long term financial debt. This could take the form I assume of renegotiating the existing debt with Connacher's existing bankers so that payment takes place at a lower rate over a twenty or thirty year period of time in terms of Connacher's long term production based on its reserves (which he views as an anuity), or perhaps as you suggest replacing long term debt by securing new long term loans at a lower rate with new bankers, over 20 or 30 years and using that money to pay off the short term debt as the Senior Unsecured Debentures ($100 million dollars) come due in 2012, and the Senior First Lien Secured Notes($200 million dollars) come due in 2014, and the Senior Second Lien Secured Notes ($587 million dollars) come due in 2015. http://www.connacheroil.com/index.php?page=shares_debentures
Obviously the success of this depends on the global financial picture in the future.
Cheers; Scott