Some thoughts

This is the path of the coastal canning survey. I have yet to gain access to the seismic data (the person in charge of it was AWOL on Friday). I have superimposed this with a map of prospects Buru released relatively recently that covered most of the basin. I can't vouch that I have transformed this 100%, there is a margin of error when trying to make different maps line up vertically and horizontally and especially if there is any shearing. I can't guarantee this is totally accurate to the pixel.
Additionally I am unaware of exactly how Buru defined these prospects. One would assume they are aeromagnetics but the prospects over the Ungani trend didn't match well with previous Ungani Trend aeromag delineations released by Buru although a few individual prospects were similar.
So with those caveats, it looks to me, from the tools I use personally that two prospects will receive a line through them as the survey traveled north to Derby and they're decent sized targets.

This could be the way forward for the company. Not these two prospects in particular, but the targeting of oil on the derby block. Unconventional exploration is going to be expensive and uncertain. Even with Buru next door helping things along OBL isn't in any kind of position to do multiple deep wells. Sure if REY suck it up and combined they do a 75% farm out or something maybe they'll get something off the ground but it's really very expensive, they have work commitments and REY doesn't sound like they want to give up a anything just yet. They are here to gain a strategic amount of the resource I think and they don't have OBL's immediate pressure to farm out and free carried.

I'd think seriously about "loosening the cap" by finding and high grading conventional prospects that overlay Laurel sweet posts and drilling the oil targets to fulfill work commitments and leaving the Laurel for later deepening after a farm out. It might take some time for Buru to generate enough excitement (they won't be doing horizontals until next year at least) and for sentiment to return to the sector so this may be a path forward to limp from A to B.

I am presuming here that a farm out is going to be hard to achieve, especially in this environment. If they manage to pull something off, then that's all fine and well. Hopefully oil is back up near the end of the year after the lack of new shale drilling in the US starts impacting reserves, but it'll probably be up and down a bit as a rising price then encourages more drilling again. I don't know what the company knows and who they've spoken to, but given most people have pulled out and we were told we'd be able to farm out if OBL got 100%, and they didn't, you'd have to say it's not looking optimistic. But hey, it's all about trying to farm out in this sector.. I couldn't be surprised if they pulled something off, it's what they're supposed to be doing and have supposed to have been doing for years.

That said going after shallow oil is an ok plan B. Buru recently came out and said they were looking at Ungani style targets on the NORTH of the basin, which I think is Janpam etc. This means there is the possibility of at least a couple of similarish prospects in Derby. In one of Buru's maps they show a Ungani prospect that almost touches Derby's borders on the south so even though it might not be proven, or like REY's tenements look very enticing, I certainly think there is some potential. Even if Buru is talking about Ungani style prospects in the north in a very loose way to get people more excited than they would otherwise be.

Still, doing shallow drills with mineral rigs is still pretty expensive and OBL would have to come up with ~$2M AFTER they'd sorted the seismic and administration costs of the next year, so maybe it's a case of shallow drill or Laurel drill $2M might as well be $10M for all OBL are going to raise. This is all a valid concern but it's certainly more achievable and could be done in a granular way, eg they could farm out ~30% of the shallow well for rights to only the shallower oil, not the underlying unconventional prospectivity.

Some of these conventional prospects should make the secondary backreef drilling where they were going after ~500k barrels look pretty small. Not that the large estimates for Backreef 1 helped it get drilled in a timely fashion, but some of these might give a little more interest than the last drill at least if they can be tied to Ungani style plays. I think Buru will find more oil shows in the trend this year (commercial oil is a different story) so there could be some conventional excitement at least.

It looks like OBL are going to do the seismic in two parts, north, then south. The Buru prospects are right in the middle of the planned seismic so that's probably a bit unfortunate, but OBL might have more Derby focused leads that show there is more to the north than what is shown above. I'm assuming it's not just that the south is probably larger and further away from town and more expensive.

One positive about REY as a partner is that they don't screw around. When REY farmed into Dunnart-2 they announced it on the 29th of May and were mobilising equipment to the site to drill 34 days later. Additionally REY are relatively well funded for a junior. They can pick up 3-4 mill in placements when they want it and they have a focus on the Canning. It's not like being saddled with a partner that doesn't have a lot of money or money raising ability and that has a major focus elsewhere. Let's be honest here, OBL is a worse partner for REY than REY is for OBL. There is a reason I wanted them to come to a compromise, and that's OBL's lack of money. I don't know what was on the table but surely some level of freecarry on commitments was asked for to drop the case. That's what any company with funding issues should have been pushing for (in the absence of any specific further negotiating information and potential outcomes).

What OBL needs to do is work with REY constructively, not piss them off. I don't think OBL are in a place to throw their weight around any more like with BRU, BOPL etc. Obviously they need to do the best for their shareholders but maybe it's time to work with REY rather than try and get legal advantages over them like they have with other companies, yes, even though OBL's pressures are different. OBL might even be able to farm down to REY.

No more legal wrangling.

Like the other Canning cousins NSE, it's time for a reduction in administration costs. NSE directors stopped drawing a wage altogether and the CEO took a 50% paycut. It's time for OBL management to go back to how they used to work several years ago - cheaply. Every dollar spent on wages is a dollar not exploring. Management have been rewarded exceedingly well with cash as shareholders felt more and more pain. Management need to reduce expenses until such time as there is success or at the very least, that sentiment as returned. It's hard to cut your income when you have acclimatised to a certain level but the current admin costs are pretty outrageous for what has been achieved. It would be a show of good faith to cut wages by 50% for the next year, or until a Laurel farm out. I would suggest taking some income in shares but the Lind facility is already diluting the registry substantially. I'm sure management can survive on $150k/pa for 12-24 months while shareholders have lost ~80% of their money. Hopefully they have saved some of their super high wages.

I'm not monday quarterbacking with the benefit of hindsight and what should or shouldn't have been done during a slide in sentiment for the sector but I guess what I'm looking for are ways to keep work commitments fulfilled and to keep OBL a going concern for the least amount of money while leveraging the work of others in the Canning. That means cheap exploration tied to proven plays, farmed down equity, hopefully in granular fashion and massive cost reductions. I think OBL can do it. Management were talking slimline mineral rigs 3-4 years before Buru cottoned onto it and they were earning a pittance 6-7 years ago. Also they farmed out 25% of Derby for $1.75M so they're not adverse to farming down. They just need to play well with others and come out with a plan of how to move ahead.