Email from AAOG15 Feb 2018 11:00
I sent a rather terse email this a.m suggesting pi's need an update and received a reply pretty quick. Have had permission to post it so will do so as it was quite an interesting reply imho...
Thanks for your email. I do appreciate that we had hoped to have the licence in place by the end of last year, and I wish that I could say more to you in this email or, better still, issue an RNS to the market as you suggest. However, we are in very sensitive negotiations with the relevant authorities in the Congo and information we told the market about those negotiations last year did not play well locally so we have to maintain silence otherwise the effect could be counterproductive. I can only say that negotiations like this in Africa do often take longer than hoped but that I am pleased with where we are in these negotiations. As soon as we are able to do so, we will update the market.
We are in parallel making sure that the plan for drilling is in place and that we will be in position to finalise the fig contract and move on to drilling TLP-103 with alacrity. The new CEO and the entire management team are very incentivised to do so and there is no benefit to any of us in, or intention to, delay drilling TLP-103 any longer than absolutely necessary.
Kind regards,
David Sefton
Executive Chairman