Rapp, I stepped back and looked... again.
The JDZ has been touted as a 14.4B barrel mother lode for over 5 years. I think the operators of the JDZ blocks were content with that. As drilling approached it became time for the serious operators to make their plays. The NSAI numbers were brought in and whoa! What happened? 14.4B barrels was suddenly a small fraction of what we've been told for years. It half worked too. It spooked Gandur. I believe Anadarko intended to buy Addax to increase their presence, but when the NSAI numbers spooked Gandur and Sinopec beat them to it, Anadarko left the zone. It seems the distraction from the 14.4B hype... er, hope, was enough for Gandur to sell out. I call that THE GAP. The gap between the goals an aspirations of a 60 year old that had already announced his desire to retire and a 50-something with a lot of upside. Offor stuck to his guns.
The largest non-operating rights holder, the company that DIDN'T flinch, is ERHC. Now we're seeing "official" news that seems to downplay that 14.4B barrels even further. Addax appears to have success and seems to be executing their independent game plan in block 4. I can't help but wonder if Sinopec is not playing a little hard ball. Did they drill for information at the expense of net pay? Will Offor flinch? Will the buyer be Sinopec, or will Chevron? Maybe a Sonagol or Petrobras take out ERHC and CVX's block 1. Or maybe Offor knows more than we do and he's prepared to stick to his guns again.
There's lots going on that we don't know about. That, or Nick's a genius and "nobody know's nuttin".
When you step waaay back and look at it, the whole damn JDZ looks like a bait and switch at the corporate level. I think that's by design.
