Rexsh"Thrumy, you regularly suggest the sale of the shale assets...

Rexsh

"Thrumy, you regularly suggest the sale of the shale assets etc.....is this solely your view or have you had discussions with management about this side of it too ? "

Rexsh, it is *not* solely my view. Some of my earlier posts are lost in the abyss, but if you go back for some months now you will see that I have had several discussions with management re. strategic options and why some are more appealing than others. In fact, most of my discussions are strategy related as this is where the real value is hidden.

Without rehashing what I have previously posted this strategy is attractive because:

1. The scale is too large for a company of ADE's size.
2. The cash injection from such a sale is truly company transforming and opens many doors that simply would not be possible without it.

"Obviously they can't say anything sensitive, but do you get the feeling that they are very confident that this is what is going to happen with this ? (for ade's share anyway)."

Correct, nothing specific/price sensitive, but yes, you can see from my many posts on this subject that I have a high level of confidence that the most obvious and favoured strategy is to offload this asset when the time is right.

"Just trying to determine If it is likely that someone is already lined up for our acreage and what might be the trigger point for them to throw an offer. "

I think you are looking at this the wrong way around. It is not a matter of **waiting** for a potential acquirer to make an offer. It is more about when Management feel the time/value is right to sell *their* asset. This is why I am so hung up on de-risking/adding value to the acreage.

During my discussions, it has been mentioned many times that there are a lot of interested parties with their eye on this play (including the Chinese) and I get the distinct impression that ADE have several options at their disposal should they feel the time is right to divest their interest. So, IMO, what is happening right now is a steady value adding strategy from ADE management.

"you think that is a late 2011,early 2012 possibility. Why do you think it is so soon ?"

I have discussed the strategic pros and cons of developing versus selling and I can tell you that ADE management know this game. They understand very clearly what is required to bring the asset to a point where they will be happy with an offload value.

I have discussed the key parameters to adding value to a gas asset (from a sale perspective). Remember, I am talking now from the view of a sale, not from what is commercial in 2015. As of last weekend, from a sale perspective the purchase price to de-risk ratio is compelling, with the value getting towards an acceptable offload level IMO.

So lets just call the timing estimate as somewhere between an educated guess and a gut feeling and leave it at that! Feel free to hold me to it down the track :)

Now, given the ludicrous market cap of ADE, from a majors perspective, a more obvious strategy is to just buy 100% of ADE as per my post a few days ago. Why buy the asset when you can take the lot for less????