Ann: Quarterly Activity and Cashflow Report to 31, page-25

re: Ann: Quarterly Activity and Cashflow Repo... just for a bit of history. watso used to have shares in a company called cultus pacific - but sold in the low tens, prior to the stock going to $3 - so watso sort of kept an eye on the stock, and its prospects. the cornea prospect, caused a lot of excitement at one stage, and shell were partners in the prospect. from the net

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=7151&pnum=1 (1999)

"three years ago, Cultus and Shell Petroleum became wildly enthusiastic about their Cornea oil discovery off the west coast of Australia. The Cultus share price surged above $A3 after speculation that Cornea contained up to 500 million barrels of oil.

Fay and Richwhite capitalised on this, with an institutional share placement raising more than $A100 million, ostensibly to finance development of Cornea.

Subsequent exploration found Cornea was waterlogged and worthless."

note that shell, and chevron were partners

from another link

Thus after drilling Cornea 1 the Shell/Chevron/Cultus venture made an astounding bid of 44 wells plus several thousand of kilometers of seismic on the adjacent two permits. (Needless to say, they were awarded the permits.) Subsequent drilling drastically reduced the original oil in place estimation, and the partnership has been allowed by the Australian government to relinquish the permits without fully living up to their well and seismic commitments. It remains to be seen what the consequences will be for the offending companies of this breach in contract terms. The permits will probably be recycled and offered to the industry again within a few years. .


..

albers certainly did a good deal (for someone), to raise the funds to drill cornea/braveheart, without losing all that much equity