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Gold/Mining/Energy : coastal caribbean (cco@) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bobby1418 who wrote (768)	4/20/1999 2:28:00 AM
From: Edwin S. Fujinaka	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 4686

Bob,...I haven't seen any other published comments on my suggested settlement or anyone else's either. Matt Moore did not get it exactly right, but He at least made a serious effort. I appreciate that He didn't make me out to be a nut case. Any actual settlement short of a Court mandated one could at least use the basic configuration that I laid out. The State ought to make a cash settlement up front with increasing yearly payments for CCO to refrain from drilling. The actual dollar amounts could be negotiated over a wide range based on some estimate of the dollar value of the leases if they were actually developed. This would require some form of appraisal I would think. I think that CCO ought to retain extended drilling rights into the future in exchange for accepting less than the full actuarial value of the oil. My original proposal was that CCO ought to pay the State all of the money back out of earnings from the oil production whenever it occurs. I didn't mean that CCO ought to share oil revenues forever, only until they pay the money back. <G>. I think the promise to pay the money back will give the State some cover for making the expenditure as sort of a loan rather than a direct expense. It'll give them an incentive to eventually develop the oil. I think that development is inevitable if the quantity of oil is anything near the amounts estimated in the Oil & Gas Journal. It would be nice to have the WSJ pick up the story around the time of the Appeals Court Decision in two or three months. If the $100 Billion valuation can be validated by some independent source, CCO's story should get some legs. The comment that Moore made about CCO wanting their money back couldn't have been based on the actual payments that the Company made. If I recall, there were yearly payments of around $37,000/year and CCO was required to drill every year or face losing the leases. So there were drilling expenses too. All of these expenses are peanuts compared to the emerging value of the oil that may actually be in place.