Riker,
My post that you questioned was a serious question, as I explained in my post prior to this one. But it also reflects my growing pessimism about UP and my fears because I loaded up on UP disproportionately for a little guy.
I've seen Colt pick up its marbles (abandoning Antelope and Billy holdings) and move on, and Key West acknowledge that Colt's remaining Green River Basin (Lizardhead) holdings, including its interest in a completed well, have virtually no value. I've seen UP decline to sink even a little more money into Luman and Cottonwood to clean them up so they would produce better and seen Adda hand a completed Green River well back to the landowner. I've seen Green River Petroleum with its completed Lovatt Draw and Warbonnet wells and its Pinedale acreage decline to virtually zero value.
If these fairly extensive holdings representative of major parts of UP's Green River acreage are worth so little, then it may turn out that most of UP's acreage amounts to just that--scrub acreage.
Then I've seen UP have to relinquish a 50% stake in its prime holdings in and around fairly prolific wells to get money to pay its current bills. Makes me wonder what other developments lie down the road. Apparently, dem dat has (like Anschutz, Questar, Snyder and Amoco) gits more and dem dat hasn't look to lose what little dey had. Maybe Maedel was right when he said he was afraid UP would drill itself into bankruptcy or at least be reduced to just getting a relatively small percentage of whatever profits the big Green River operators can make off those parts of UP's acreage that are actually worth drilling on.
I bought UP without calculating what drilling and completion expenditures would be, what cash UP had for these and other expenditures and how far that cash would go, when UP would start receiving revenues from the wells it could drill (or drill in partnership with an outside operator like Halliburton), how much those revenues would amount to, etc. and without determining whether these calculations pointed to an endeavour that could be ongoing and self-sustaining.
No wonder that, when the speculators had had their fling and left, the investors (the kind who looked for something that the NUMBERS said was a real investment) weren't about to buy UP and, without buyers, the price of UP plummeted.
Guess I'm learning the hard way. |
