RE: A big question.16 Oct 2025 14:14
The simple answer is that they made a mistake in thinking that the geology was similar to the Rharb basin. Lonny and the drilling manager paid for this mistake with their jobs, while the person in overall control and who repeatedly stated testing was not required continues on regardless.
Any partnership is going to take into account the still high risk in Morocco. They have a new drilling mud plan, but they need to demonstrate it works. The resources are based on seismics which to date they have struggled with the low quality Mou 2 and Mou5 for example. The Mou fan is classed as resources which fetch a lower price than reserves due to their unproven nature, reservoir risk and no one knows how the reservoirs will perform as they have been unable to achieve flow. As porters stated formation damage was greater than expected. It was initially thought to be around 8 inches, now they think it's 20 inches plus. None of this is a deliberate attempt to delineate as some have claimed, they have been working from a flawed initial concept for years and now hopefully they are on the right path. The Mou wells 1,3,4 and 5 are probably write offs. Mou 2 could be deepened using Mou 6 mud plan if successful, but it's more likely they will drill Mou 7 to have two production wells.
If PG was honest and had his time again I bet he would have approached it differently and tested MOU1, but with the tone of recent rns saying how drilling etc has improved I suspect he will be blaming Lonny tonight in a Trump lite rewriting of history.