Oh Willy, how's that for timing as a rebuttal to the comment in your post? Just 29 minutes after your post ...

BBQ, the timeliness is actually understandable. They talked a week or so ago about the fact that they were "discussing" the possibility of doing additional drilling. They obviously decided to go ahead. Rigs are presumably available, but they needed to raise the money immediately so they can go ahead with booking the companies for drilling in a few months time. Winter is a good time to drill.

Well, more dilution sucks, but this will undoubtedly increase the reserve base. Maybe that will get the stock price back up a bit in the new year, which will be critical if additional dilution is needed rather than debt for the long term.

If there's one thing that I've learned over the past four years, any short-term (couple of weeks) unexplained increase in SP of about 10-25%, without corresponding rise in POO or the SP of UTS or comparable companies, usually indicates some sort of manipulation to increase the average trading price of the shares so as to validate a higher issue price for a new issue. In other words, a sustained slight increase in stock price with no obvious explanation usually means more shares being issued in the near term.