Hi Brian;

I agree completely with your analysis of the protracted demise of Petrolifera due to the errors committed by it's management team over its six years of existance. What unfolded in Argentina happened on Petrolifera's management's watch and they must accept total responsiblity for it as you have stated. You however, didn't mention the ABCP paper fiasco which I think was responsible for the serious underfunding of the company and it's ultimate demise. Petrolifera in 2007 (I think it was) had an equity offering to raise capital to fund it's future drilling program. Since management wasn't going to spend the money immediately it put the money from the sale of shares into a dubious financial product that their banker was only to happy to sell it, ABCP paper which at the time was paying a marginally higher interest rate than other more secure investments were returning. When the ABCP paper became worthless overnight and couldn't be sold, management was left holding the bag. Petrolifera's bankers should have redeemed the ABCP paper at it's face value but we all know now that banker's have no loyalty to their customers or ethics or morality. With Petrolifera's newly raised equity frozen in ABCP paper which at the time was basically worthless, Petrolifera became severely underfunded to drill up the oil pools that it had already discovered, for a number of years. This was management's responsibility and it was an irresponsible act. I don't want Petrolifera's management and bankers to be the only ones who benefitted during Petrolifera's life through their free shares and share warrants. Hopefully, Connacher shareholders will get some benefit from their 21% ownership of Petrolifera through the value that will remain in the Gran Tierra shares that Connacher ends up with. Otherwise the last 6 years of Connacher's holding Petrolifera shares will have been a waste of time for Connacher's shareholders. I hope that the analysts that Jurek cited are wrong about the future share price of Gran Tierra's shares, as they frequently are wrong about most share values, and that Connacher shareholder's come out of this on a positive note.

Jurek you seem to be saying that Connacher should dump the Gran Tierra shares very soon as holding them for a year and a half won't make any difference in value. I also get what you are saying about Petrolifera's lands also being better quality and more valuable than many of the leases that Gran Tierra is presently holding, however, that's the way the oil business works. The strong management teams survive and profit off the weaker ones. What was the alternative for Petrolifera? Not to sell to Gran Tierra....and go bankrupt? Petrolifera was bleeding out. One of the last deals that management made was to sign a pathetic deal to sell natural gas for $1.00 a thousand cubic feet from the Brilliante well just to get some money coming in to survive. There was no better deal out there.

Cheers; Scott