>By contrast the oil in australia, specifically Beetaloo would be expensive and probably totally un-economic for the foreseable future until we get much higher oil prices (hence, BHP would stay away from it).

For the unconventional shale oil part of the play thats true, but the 'excitement' over the Beetaloo is the possibility of large accumulations of conventional oil deposits. Those types of plays do not need the high oil prices we saw in 2008 to be economical. Besides that, today's oil prices don't mean anything unless you are producing and selling gas today. When you are exploring, it's much more important what the oil prices will be in the future over the life of the project.

As for BHP, they aren't too much into coal seam methane or LNG at the moment either. That doesn't mean that CSM and LNG plays are not worth persuing.

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Q: We’ve seen an enormous amount of positioning in the LNG space. People come in to coal seam methane, the majors playing a big part acquiring assets etc. We haven’t heard much from BHP on LNG for some time. It’s obviously an important part of your business, but you don’t control it as such.

A: "Clearly, not something that is at the top of our list. That’s not to say that others don’t have a good angle that they’re taking, but it’s just that our - in our circumstances, we have things that we think are more robust and more certain."