Thanks for the reply MTO. I both agree and disagree with some of the points you raise. First, you indicate disagreement with the article when in fact the excerpts were from several articles which were essentially saying the same thing. Interestingly, there is another article out today on World Oil that is again saying the same thing the other articles suggested - offshore deep water drilling is on the rebound. In my experience in the industry, the key factor to viability of deep water drillers has always been the day rates they charge the oil companies. When oil prices were over $100 the day rates just kept going up, up and away. Since prices have slumped so too have their day rates. This is in fact one of the things (coupled with the fact they seem to have a lot of debt to service) that has made the deep water drillers lousy investments in their own right at the moment. So to that end, while things may not be real rosy as far as their current earnings may go, I do agree agree with you that the deep water drilling industry will be around for a while to come. Now in so far as whether this in turn signals any sort of a real possibility that we will see activity in the ERHC blocks we have a common interest in here on this board, I agree with you that iany sort of revival in deep water drilling may not necessarily equate to positive news that will magically save EHRC. But then again, most of this discussion came about as one of those "never say never" sort of responses by a number of folks here. I see that a lot of the discussion here dwells only on the points of disagreement without taking the time to acknowledge the places where we agree. As we all know, shareholders have received absolutely zero news from the management team to indicate anything that would raise our hopes in the JDZ.. So from this standpoint I am not inclined to get my hopes up about it, but not willing to write it off completely either as they still theoretically pull a rabbit out of their hat. But as you mention, given their track record that might be in question too. I guess that really makes this a speculative name in the space.
