EOM would have walked by now if its engineers were not confident of the drilling and extraction tech. If they had serious doubts obout the extraction tech, they most likely would have tested their tech on a FO well or drilled one EOM well and tested it. They did not, and continue to drill delienation wells.

Not quite agree with you here, Oldwine. XOM will go through the phase one as required in the contract. Phase two is a check point, go if nothing was found to give reason to kill the JV and if some positive encouragement was detected in phase one. And XOM will go through the motions of drilling, testing, adjusting the technology as required as long as there is a potential of a significant pay off. They will walk away if they determine that the technolgy cannot be imported and adjusted to make Mako profitable at a rate of return that meets XOM's needs. Too bad that Gus and Lanman ignored the previous posts, because that was their opportunity to shed light and dispell the notion that Mako could be at the top of the pile from an academic point of view, and at the bottom of the pile from a technological view point.

db