Researcher, as the saying goes, "watch what they do, not what they say". Many thanks to you who dug this info up. This corroborates what I had heard recently from the company CEO and has several implications IMO:
1) Most importantly, the fact that they are continuing to lease even after seeing the first well flow for a month or more, and after seeing the IP for the 2nd well, speaks volumes of what they think of this project at this time. Normally by this point I would be thinking "no news is bad news" but not now. If in fact they have a good flow rate to announce in one or both of these first 2 wells then it would obviously behoove them to lease up as much more acreage as they can get their hands on prior to publicly announcing any flow rates.
2) The fact that they have chosen to go "all-in" on this project with their remaining funds, even though they have been advised by Slawson that the 2-well drilling program is only a few weeks from getting restarted, speaks volumes of their confidence in getting additional financing. I know they were still thinking about some sort of "debt with warrants" deal as of a few weeks ago but with the stock skyrocketing since then I wonder if they might be reconsidering and just do a pure equity raise instead.
3) These don't appear to be large blocks and I believe the large blocks are probably all taken at this point, but there are probably plenty of small parcels still available. A company the size of Devon Energy can only work with the large blocks of acreage. The small stuff is just not cost-efficient for them to deal with. This creates a great opportunity, where a tiny company such as Osage can walk behind a giant such as Devon and pick up all the crumbs that Devon leaves behind. This is how it worked up in the Bakken, where the smaller companies were able to build large non-operated portfolios of small interests in wells, by picking up small pieces of acreage that the larger companies just didn't bother to pick up.
It would not be a huge surprise to hear that Osage is a partner (albeit for a small W.I.) in wells to be drilled by the likes of Devon or Chesapeake in the coming months, by virtue of Osage picking up these little acreage parcels.
