You bet it's personal, it has been personal the whole time. This is a bunch of people all wanting to have their own train set. This is my play by play which is all in my own opinion.
FMG and OBL - I believe that FMG wanted to takeover OBL, the terms based on our position now were quite generous. I think that OBL management started playing hardball for self interest reasons. The other reason I believe FMG pulled the pin is because they got wind of the looming native title challenge, which I believe was secretly funded by BRU is some way. Why? with legal issues looking over the block, FMG withdraws interest and BRU do a deal with BOPL.
All parties knew that the native title case would be thrown out, but the objective was to weaken OBL, which is did. With BOPL knowing that their legal position to offload 50% to BRU was shakey at best, not paying bills or being an active participant in the development was only going to continue to weaken OBL's position, opening the door even wider for BRU, who want to be operator.The Derby block would have been nice little piece for BRU's puzzle.
What they didn't bank on was OBL's ability to arrange trickle feed funding. This has absolutely destroyed the SP but at least kept the company solvent while all the interference is taking place. In the process OBL have taken BOPL have been taken to court for not paying cash calls and gone for the jugular by applying for BOPL to be struck off the block entirely. There is bad blood all around.
Round table discussions have been conducted but nobody has been willing to move on their position. Throw in the mix personal issues and agenda's we are at a stalemate, hence leaving it to a tribunal to determine an outcome. In this situation, nobody wins but the lawyers.
So where are we at now? BRU have walked away. The deal breaker was that they wanted to be operator, which wasn't going to happen. They definitely wanted in, but at the end of the day they are having issues of their own at the moment and given that they can see that BOPL's position is very loose, have decided to bow out. I don't believe we have seen the last of BRU though.
In comes REY. They know the outcome will most probably go in OBL's favour, but it has cost them nothing to be involved and as we all know, strange things to happen. As you tell by the conditions of the agreement with BOPL, they have BOPL over a barrel. This actually works in favour of OBL, because it now values the block even less, when in reality it's just REY trying to gain a better position for itself in the unlikely event that the deal goes ahead. All good there
Archibald is desperate, really desperate, but pride is getting in the way of getting any kind of deal done with OBL. He would rather cut off his own arm, just so that he wouldn't be able to shake OBL's hand, hence the deal with REY. What he should have done was hand the block to OBL and take a 2% royalty.
Make no mistake this is a pretty highly sought after piece of Dirt.... OBL, FMG, OXX, BOPL, and now REY. I haven't seen a list this long of players in a while. Which only reinforces in my mind the value of the Derby Block. The key is just getting past all this rubbish and getting on with the job.
As you tell with the steady flow of announcements coming through, everything is being lined up. The key is having the ownership issues sorted. Once that happens we can look forward to some interesting developments.
Will OBL be taken over? Absolutely !!!!! what figure? who knows, but it will be before true value is realised.
That's my 0.5c worth
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