I just had to get up early here in the UK to catch this...

I just had to get up early here in the UK to catch this announcement.

Those figures couldn’t have been better and exceeded what the market was expecting thus the trading halt.

Irrelevant of the short term share price which is purely a ‘frothy reaction’ to the immediacy of news – this update has added some serious value to our asset base with COI having moved from being a minnow with a game plan to being a player which has booked some serious reserves.

A master stroke drilling those horizontal wells - and to achieve maiden 1P reserves at this early stage of the game because of the success in performance of Mahalo and Mira again exceeded market expectations.

Interesting to note that our management had to book a gross 334 PJ of 2P reserves to get our share of free carry Santos expenditure back which in turn meant that to achieve this - our net share of recalculated 2P at 40% would have been 133.6 PJ – so I would suggest that our management felt relatively confident that this figure was going to be exceeded.

There is further potential to move resources into reserves from ongoing appraisal - plus during this year the work program will look to build those 1P and 2P figures bringing this play ever closer towards production viability.

Whilst this news is being digested – the spud date at Galilee is drawing ever closer with the first hole to be sunk to test the sandstone deeps.

Mahalo is nailed – Galilee could put the second horse into the race.

Not counting our chickens before they have hatched - but as gas flowed to surface when oil was being sought back in the 60's and 90's - I feel that we have a fair chance of achieving the same.

A company milestone has been passed - management and shareholders alike must be delighted.