davmarc,
Let's just say I am a petroleum geologist with a good grounding in reservoir engineering, a decade of experience in the resources industry, and I evaluate plays such as this for a career. I'm sure you can appreciate that since HC is an anonymous forum, I prefer to remain anonymous.
You are free to ignore everything I say if you choose. I just hope you're not ignoring what I say, and seeking to attack my qualifications, because it conflicts with your desire to seek out confirmation bias
You say you want evidence that I know what I'm talking about, then when I point out about the wet coals, you say I just took a 50-50 punt. I would suggest that if somebody is going to go against a company like STX, with its technical staff looking at all the data in front of them, and make a claim in direct contradiction to something the company has said, that person needs to be pretty damn sure of what they're talking about and not just taking a punt. Besides, if the company really is technically proficient, and I don't know what I'm talking about, then surely going against their claim is more like a 10% punt? Or a 5%? Surely they are overwhelmingly likely to be correct if I'm just randomly picking technical details that I know nothing about.
What's more likely? I fluked a 5 or 10% chance in direct contradiction to what the company said, after raising concerns about it going back some months and explaining in several detailed posts my reasoning? Or I do this for a living, so I actually had enough knowledge to realise it was a valid concern? Entirely your choice.
The phenomenon where people seek to discredit evidence that disagrees with what they want to be true is called disconfirmation bias, it goes hand-in-hand with confirmation bias. I see it on HC every single day. I catch myself doing it too. We all do it.
Anyway, that's all I will say on the matter. I'm not trying to convince you that I have all the answers, because I certainly don't. The permeability in these coals definitely surprised me, and surprised STX too. I'm also not an expert in petroleum economics. I don't have the data that STX have on the geology and reservoir engineering, but I "reverse engineered" (pardon the pun) some of it out of their presentations and got very similar results to what STX presented there. So I'm confident I have a decent understanding of the play and most importantly, I'm confident in what we don't know yet (including what STX don't know yet).
If my posts are useful as part of your decision-making process, then you're welcome to use them. That's why I write them (and because I love geology, especially O&G geology). If you prefer to believe I just take random punts on all this stuff, you're welcome to ignore them.
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