>Besides that, closing a drill-site is not like everyone dropping his work on the count of three and literally walking away immediately, so I guess even with a done fracjob, fluid recovery, flowtesting and all the completion work, they would still be working on site even if they had already decided to abandon the well.

Abandoning the well, if that is what they are doing, would also most likely require a considerable amount of equipment and manpower. It cost over $5 million to P&A the Mako-6. I would assume that some money had to be set aside from the $45 million that Exxon had to spend in order to pay for abandonment costs.

(Out of the $50 million, $5 million went towards the Mako 6)

Come to think of it, why would they have planned 4 fracs and a subsequent test period, when there was apparently only enough money to perform 3 fracs? Perhaps they figured if the first fracs flowed gas, they wouldn't have to abandon the well, so they could use the set-aside money (if there was some) to perform additional fracs. Since the first 2 didn't work, they thought "hummm, if 3 & 4 don't work, we wont have any money left to P&A the well.

Just thinking out loud :)