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Gold/Mining/Energy : KOB.TO - East Lost Hills & GSJB joint venture -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cash money who wrote (267)	11/30/1998 11:36:00 AM
From: Bearcatbob	Respond to of 15703

Beats me. I just checked in to see what is up. Bob

To: cash money who wrote (267)	11/30/1998 10:17:00 PM
From: Bearcatbob	Respond to of 15703

Well Cash, It is now 10:00 pm and we do not know anything except that the boys are out raising money. Now if I were cynical I would say the news is good. So who is taking down the share offerings. I would like to know. So if it is good we would not want to drive price up would we. We would want to buy shares quick so that we have more participation in the anticipated rise. So, if the news is bad - who would put new money in at the current prices. You tell me. I think the whole thing stinks. I tried a bunch of calls tonight and could not get any info. So now I see share offerings. Hey thread, what do you think of this stuff! Bob

To: cash money who wrote (267)	12/1/1998 5:27:00 AM
From: Bearcatbob	Respond to of 15703

No date yet set for capping well Filed: December 1, 1998 By BOB CHRISTIE Californian staff writer e-mail: bchristie@bakersfield.com LOST HILLS — It will be at least four more days before firefighters will be able to determine if it will be weeks or months before they can control a blazing natural gas well that exploded here more than a week ago. A five-man crew from Boots & Coots International Well Control, headed by 25-year veteran James Tuppen, on Monday continued pulling the wreckage of the Nabors Drilling USA drilling rig from the flames.<Picture>A firefighter from Boots & Coots International Well Control of Houston, Texas, on Monday walks in front of a natural gas well that blew out a week ago near Lost Hills. A second firefighter uses a high pressure hose to cool equipment removing the remains of the drilling rig destroyed when the well caught fire. The well is expected to burn for at least another week. Bob Christie / The Californian The natural gas fueling the blaze is coming from more than three miles down, and if the fire is doused and the well brought on to production, it will be the deepest commercial well in the state. The well's owner won't release estimates of the amount of gas escaping, but it is massive. One longtime oil man said a very conservative estimate would be in the range of 10 million cubic feet per day. "The big question is, you may get a big flow rate but if you don't have a big reservoir you're done," said Claude Fiddler, who retired from Chevron in 1990 and formerly headed California operations for the oil giant. "The Lakeview gusher (a famous 1910 oil well blowout near Taft that flowed 9 million barrels of oil in 18 months), it gushed and gushed and made all that oil, but there wasn't anything after that." Lakeview sputtered and never produced another drop of oil. The Lost Hills find, so deep as to be in unexplored territory and so unique as to have the whole oil local oil industry abuzz, could be different. "These guys are in new territory. There's no telling what's there," Fiddler said. "I have not seen one burn as long as this one." Tuppen said removing the remaining debris from around the blazing well should take about four days. Most of the auxiliary equipment has been dragged from the howling flames by Boots & Coots crews using bulldozers and a special boom with a huge forged hook. What remains is the rig floor, the rotary table, the drawworks and the blowout preventers, all parts of the elaborate mechanism that is a modern oil well drilling rig. After the site is cleared, the crew will be able to assess the well head and casing to determine if the flow of natural gas and condensed hydrocarbons can be easily staunched or if a more difficult approach is needed. "It's not a matter of whether we can cap it or not," Tuppen said. "We can cap any well in the world ... if the pipe has integrity." The condition of the pipe casing extending into the well bore will be the determining factor, Tuppen said. If it is damaged deep in the ground — more than 30 feet — there will be no capping the well. In that worst-case scenario, a second well needs to be drilled that connects with the blazing well's bore deep underground. The second well will serve to siphon off the immense pressure of the flowing gas. Planning for the relief well is under way, and it will be started regardless of the initial damage assessment, Tuppen said. If the well casing isn't damaged, Tuppen's crew should be able to cap the blaze. The well exploded a week ago Monday as the rig crew tried to clear the bore of natural gas that had "kicked" into the well bore. Seventeen men fled from the site just minutes before a fireball hundreds of feet tall engulfed the rig. The well was being drilled by Bellevue Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Canadian oil and gas company Elk Point Resources Inc., with participation from 11 other U.S. and Canadian oil companies. The site is leased from Chevron USA, which will receive a 25 percent royalty payment from any commercial discovery. On Monday, the Kern County fire Department issued a warning to the public about the dangers of trying to get close to the raging fire. Such public forays into the fire area place members of the public and workers trying to quench the blaze at great risk, said Capt. Tony Diffenbaugh. The sight of the flames, visible for dozens of miles, is drawing people by the dozens to the remote location 45 miles northwest of Bakersfield. On the west bank of the California Aqueduct, Bakersfield resident Bob Martin, a retired schoolteacher, couldn't help but be awed by the ferocity of the flames on Monday. "The noise is more than what I thought it would be," Martin said. "I knew it would be loud, but this is just incredible. I just can't imagine how they're going to snuff it out." The Boots & Coots team doesn't need imagination. They've been at hundreds of fires, from Kuwait to the North Sea. Tuppen said for he and his crew, it's just one step at a time until they get the job done.