Chuck Yates Needs A Job

0:20 So I'm going to call the order of the meeting of the people that want to make Brian Sheffield more money. This is our group meeting, President Vice President. Excellent. Excellent. Well, yeah,

0:34 it's

0:37 one of my missions. Exactly. So you'll seem aligned in an interest there. I think that would be good. He's my largest shareholder and I built a really good relationship with him in the last couple

0:46 of years I feel like we're one as one team. We've kind of become pretty close after spending eight days in Australia together. Particularly out in the

0:58 Northern territory. Yeah. Yeah. I guess before

1:09 last time we caught up, you were right before your trip. Yeah. I didn't know what you were getting into. I had no idea what I was getting into, but we loaded it up. We went and saw what's Tim's

1:15 name the guy from the.

1:19 Oh, the bar. Oh, Daily Water's fun. Daily Water's fun. Yeah, we met Tim out with him and so he got the pretty, pretty smooth little wheelchair with the, with the, with the big horns and yeah,

1:32 it's good guy. Yeah, he was chasing a cow around.

1:37 Got the museum. Did you go to the museum? We, yeah, we poked our head and we're looking for two stuff. Yeah, that was really, that was really cool And, you know, very entrepreneurial guy. I

1:48 mean, was sitting there talking with Brian about, you know, do you want to be an oil-filled bar? Do you want to have the executives here? You probably don't want to be the oil-filled bar, maybe

1:58 we'll do that over here. Do we, do we ask fault in this runway for the airplane? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, he has a grand vision and he loves us with all the work that we're doing out there to kind

2:12 of work with him to, you know, kind of to set the infrastructure in place really for a lot of this. of water is to be the, you know, the Midland Texas at some point. The bar. Exactly. The bar.

2:25 All right. So level set me. Who's Tam Boren? Give me the quick elevator pitch on these guys, who you are. So we're, we've built in the last 12 years I've been in this job, the largest acreage

2:39 position in the B. Lou Basin. So we operate about two million net acres

2:45 When I got involved in 2013, the company had a small 25 working interest on the East part of the basin, about 150, 000 net acres.

2:59 And we set behind Santos for about a decade, watching them drill wells. And Origin, who was the previous operator, the acreage that that Tim Warren has with Brian today, was the other big

3:13 operator in the basin So those two operators sort of put some wells down.

3:19 And it became really clear that in order to unlock commercialization of the beat-a-loo, we had to import technology from the US. into the beat-a-loo.

3:33 And so, you know, my previous experiences with Exxon, and so I come with an Exxon type mindset that you have to actually control the game and operate to really set up the phasing of a development

3:45 And so, the timing would have it, and in 2022, Tamborin went from a non-operating company behind Sandtoste, now the largest operator in the beat-a-loo. And so, we bought together with Brian the

4:02 origin acreage. And

4:07 together with that transaction, we've been able to attract some really strong partners that

4:14 USHP has now got a rig on location in the beat-a-loo. We have access to four more HP rigs, these are the modern flex three rigs, and then we have a partnership of Liberty

4:28 to bring Frak equipment. The unusual part of both of those deals is that HP of Liberty became equity shareholders at Tamborin at the time of the strategic deal we did with them. So we set that up as

4:40 a structure to create alignment between the service company and us being the operator and you know I would say one of the key elements of you know really unlocking a big base in like the beat-a-loo is

4:54 you have to have great partners that are looking kind of over the horizon over the next few decades and that's one of the things that HP and Liberty really brought to the mix is they don't see this as

5:05 being one contract that's going to be two years they see this being you know 20 plus years and that's the right kind of partner for us because when we think about The next couple of decades, what we

5:17 want to do is take that 2 million acres and convert that to,

5:22 you know, 50 plus TCF of reserves and set this up as sort of the more sell us in the Asia-Pacific region. And so,

5:33 so K elements to unlocking that strategy is having great partners, having a big acre church position. And, you know, when I look at all the success the US. basins have had, including parsley

5:48 energy, you know, Brian being involved in the Permian and other big companies. There were so many companies competing. It created this oversupply that we see today. One of the things that I've

6:01 been really conscious in setting up Tamborin is to have a majority interest in the in the beat of lose so that we can not have this oversupply situation in Australia. days, the development as we see

6:16 fit. And in a lot of ways, not get into this situation, we have, you know, hundreds of operators all competing and are creating overpaying for everything. Yeah, all overpaying, we can do it in

6:31 a very, I would say in an adult way, we can plan out our, our, our developments. And all that value will go toward, you know, company and obviously the partners that we, we work with,

6:46 including Brian. Yeah. So, so where, where are we right now? Uh, because I've, I've actually been there and seeing it, you know, when we would at Kane Anderson, we would do early stage

6:58 assets. So we'd go and we'd drill the first horizontal well in a county. Yep. Uh, first modern track, we did a lot of this and kind of our checklist that we developed that sounds really simple,

7:08 but yeah, trial and error, you kind of figure this out. It's number one, you had to have enough in the way. penetrations so that you could map the the shale or the formation just so you know

7:19 where it is sure So we had to have that and then we always had to have

7:26 Proof of productivity of some sort even if it's crappie old vertical wells that didn't make economic Production, but at least you knew the rock would work and we found it was even better if you had

7:39 periodic vertical Production that was way better, and right generally when you looked in there you found some sort of natural fracturing or some sort Either it was on a structure right or or

7:51 something and So when you guys were kind of looking at beat-a-lose step me through what was kind of your checklist on sort of figuring this out And where are we now? Yeah, yeah, it's a great

8:03 question We have some really talented geologists that have really mapped the whole basin and done quite a bit of job detailed work around taking the well control that we do have, most of them being

8:16 vertical wells with cores and logs and defects, and matching that against about100 million of seismic that was originally purchased by Amrada Hess when they were in the beat-a-loo in late 2009.

8:29 It's100 million went down in seismic, so we were like blessed with lots of big companies. A

8:37 lot of 2D's. We're going to look here. Let's get 100 million of seismic Yeah, so 2D's seismic pretty much, you know, over the whole 5 million acres. And then we had all these vertical wells,

8:47 some of which had some vertical flow testing. So we were able to really define where we wanted to focus our horizontal drilling efforts through that data. And so kind of the checklist that we went

9:01 through was, are you deep? So depth in

9:08 our thesis is very, very important to be able to live. As you get deeper, you get into overpressure. So we're seeing kind of 06 psi per foot and where we're currently focused, it shouldn't go

9:20 south. On the east part of the basin, where we're partnered with Santos, we've seen up to 053 psi per foot. So as you get deeper, you get overpressure. You also get better shell development. So

9:32 you see in better porosity, better permeability, thicker sections So you're dealing with about 450 feet of section here, and you have stacked shells of up to four zones. So multi stacked, high

9:50 pressure, high quality shells, what kind of we've seen as we've put together the regional picture. Now, with that as a backdrop, the thesis on around the regional geology is that this is a,

10:10 basin that originally the rocks were laid down about 12 billion years ago. So think about what the

10:16 world was, and it wasn't dinosaurs and organic matter dying, it was algae. So the algae is what got laid down, which created the hydrocarbons, the gas, the natural gas that we're looking to

10:34 develop in the shell. So what that means is there's not a lot of complexity So one of the unique things we saw as you've drilled vertical wells, you had very similar section across the whole 5

10:46 million acres, which is fascinating. Right. And the question when I was working with Santos, but also I've heard this from origin as they couldn't figure out why there was so much consistency.

11:01 And we have a very talented geologist named Donnie Lourley, who came from Pioneer. He did a lot of the regional work in the Permian.

11:10 his thesis is that other than over pressure, you should see kind of the same section. Very consistent, it's not county to county, you're seeing different kinds of complexity that you might see in

11:22 an early stage play, here in the US, but much what you probably saw at Kane Anderson, things change and Brian has a lot of geologists that have a lot of scar tissue from that. So when we started

11:39 working with Brian, and we were kind of centered around an area in the northern part of the basin called the Amunji area, this is where Origin did a lot of work. And, you know, I would say a lot

11:50 of the technical grounding was around how do we develop that area? Because that's where we had a lot of well control, a lot of data, a lot of a horizontal flow test. Relatively easy pipeline

12:02 access. Yeah, yeah, pipeline, like I think you guys went out there and saw the pipeline that's nearby. We spent a lot of time working on that, but our geologist, Donnie Larley, had this thesis

12:15 that we need to be in the deeper section of the basin, that's where we think better commercial flow rates would come, with overpressure, better rock development,

12:26 thicker section. And we were lucky because, Tam Boren, when we did the Origin Deal with Brian, there were two carried wells in which we had to pay 100 cost on So, first of all, we drilled was an

12:40 origin location at the Amunji area. It basically had a regal location. They wanted to drill that well. We picked up the keys like we closed on a Wednesday and spudded that well on a Thursday. So

12:51 it was crazy, back to back. And so, Tam Boren drilled that well, but the well we really wanted to drill was Shenandoah South, which was about 50 miles south with no well control. But it was

13:05 right in the center of the Depa Center.

13:09 that well shouldn't know itself one. And I think if that well was not 100

13:16 tambourine cost, it would've been very difficult to influence our JB partners, including Brian, to have that biggest step out. I know they were very nervous about drilling that up. Yeah, that

13:26 happened in America. 50 mile step out, you know, different, you know, you're talking about 10 counties over. I was crazy. I thought it was crazy when we started using sections away Yeah, it

13:37 was, you know, much less 50 miles. So we drilled that well and it became, I think, seen by industry to be the best well-drilled in the beat-a-loot today. Right. Came in right on, you know,

13:51 right, kind of our pre-drilled depth. It was, you know, the thickest section of any well that's been drilled in the beat-a-loot, multi-stacked, 06 PSI per foot, validated, you know,

14:07 essentially validated our regional. geology picture. And that is the location that we're drilling six more follow-up wells to this year for next year are two and 24 wells in 25, so this year. And

14:22 that will develop the first 40 million cubic feet a day of production from that shit into a South area. And I think the data coming from those six

14:35 wells will be the foundation of sort of the thesis around developing a much larger project that we would envision up to two BCF a day. So, you know, I would say, coming back to your question

14:49 around checklist, I think that shit into a South location met all the checklist, but because it was such a big step out, it made a lot of folks nervous around our JV table, and probably including

15:01 Brian himself, you know, around, you know, enjoying that well, but now that that well has been drilled. You know, we've had a one horizontal that we drilled into it. We saw better flow rates

15:13 than any other flow rate in the basin. We're drilling, you know, two 10, 000 foot horizontals and we're getting ready to pump the stimulation today with the new flat front equipment from Liberty.

15:22 These are big 2,

15:27 800 pounds per foot type fracks. We got 74 stages going into 10, 000 feet in one of those. Yeah, those are real fracks So these are big 100 bells a minute, slick water design. So when we talk

15:40 about US. technology, this is what we're talking about is completion design that would look and feel like you're in the middle of the Marcellus. Yeah, I was forgetting exactly what Brian or

15:55 somebody on the trip or Joel or whoever on the trip was talking about, and it may have even been you and Dick all got together and talked the two things that were crazies, one. Like you said, the

16:10 12 billion years ago. Yeah. 'Cause what's the Marcellus 600 million? Yeah, it's like 500 million years old. Yeah, that's like 700 million years earlier, which is kind of crazy. And then two,

16:23 in all of Australia until you all drilled these new wells, literally you never had a casing hole big enough to do a modern fracking. Correct. So five and a half inch casing was it's a standard here

16:37 in the US, all the previous wells were four and a half. Four and a half. So you're limited to like 60 barrels in a minute. Yeah. To the four and a half. And that's where I think Brian and his

16:47 team brought a lot of,

16:51 I would say they brought a lot of good energy around. How do we bring five and a half inch casing into the well design?

17:02 And that's been one of the keys, I think in delivering a great well test on this. this last well we drilled is we got up to 100 barrels a minute over the 10 stages that we pumped and then we saw

17:15 equivalent to what would be an 18 million a day flow test over a 10, 000 foot horizontal. So you needed that five and a half inch casing to get that kind of productivity. Yeah, this is going to be

17:30 a nice problem to have down the road. What was interesting about us doing early stage assets is the mindset was go ahead and hit the rock with as big a hammer as you can. You can always optimize

17:46 kind of well-designed, fracked design later. And we would wind up doing that later. Maybe we don't need all the sand or whatever the case may be.

17:56 But it was you almost hit it. And then when you got into spacing, it became exactly the opposite mindset of, Well, if we think there are eight wells a section or six wells a second. let's just

18:08 drill three, you know, to see. And we

18:10 actually, we actually wound up making the mistake of, well, we'll drill eight and if we just spend too much money, well, next time we'll drill seven. Well, a lot of times when you stick eight

18:21 straws in the milkshake, you don't even get all the milkshake back. Right. Totally. So yeah, what kind of conversations like that are bouncing around tambourine as y'all are thinking through,

18:32 'cause in effect you're drilling, call it generation two wells. Sure Yeah, so I mean, naturally you don't have the least lines that you're dealing with in the US. Two million acres. You got two

18:46 million net acres here. So, the rigs that we have on location can drill up to 25, 000 feet horizontal or more. That's the technical limit. So,

18:59 whereas Exxon or say EQT and the Marcellus, they can drill those long laterals they just don't have the least contiguous lease papers to be able to do so, whereas in the beat-a-loo, we don't have

19:12 any of those limitations. So I think we're certainly not gonna do it in this year's program, but as we think about 2026 and beyond, we will look to drill beyond 10, 000 foot and quickly get down

19:27 that curve toward 20, 000 feet or longer on the lateral And that'll involve synthetic muds and other things that we're gonna be thinking about this year to be able to unlock that ability, to drill

19:42 that kind of long lateral. I think that'd be a game changer. For as we think about a two BCF a day development plan you're dealing with right now with 10, 000 foot horizontals you can develop the

19:54 two BCF a day and get to a plateau and about 180 wells So with a 20, 000 foot horizontal, it's kind of half that. So talking about 100 wells. instead of 280 wells. You talk about something less

20:10 than 100 wells. So

20:13 that is on the front of our mind.

20:17 The other thing I would say is kind of the stages that we're pumping 74 stages over 10, 000 foot. That's about 125 feet in between each stage We think there's opportunity to further optimize that to

20:37 tighter stage spacing. We're gonna see how these wells kind of come back this year. But I think that's a further optimization that we'll look toward. And I think one of the great things that we

20:54 have going on at the moment with these two wells is that these are the first wells being fracked by Liberty equipment So we have 32 pumps out there, over 80, 000 horsepower.

21:08 HP brought out, which is kind of standard here in the US, but bigger hammer in your words, we're going to look to do bigger fracks beyond 2, 800 pounds per foot, up to 3, 000 pounds per foot is

21:21 in

21:24 the horizon in the next couple of months, so bigger fracks, longer laterals It's a multi-stage,

21:33 you have different layers, so some of the cool things that Exxon are doing around cube development design, so basically being able to develop two or more sections at a time, because this

21:52 is a multi-stacked shell, we have the opportunity to do that same kind of thing. That to me is more of a later this decade kind of thing. We want to be really focused on the primary shell, but

22:05 kind of as we think about 12 months from now, you know, bigger fracks, longer laterals, and then in the horizon, it's how do we develop, you know, multi-layers of the beat-a-lift. Yeah, it

22:19 got crazy on some of the stuff we were looking at at Caine. I forget the details around this one play, but we literally figured out that as much as 10 feet, in terms of where we landed the lateral,

22:34 really, really mattered, like 35 difference in the well. And none of the engineers could ever give me a straight answer on what it is that. I mean, aren't we blasting away a frack bigger than

22:46 that? She's had the frack wing coming. Yeah, and also, we never got to the point where we drilled 500 wells, 'cause we were always flipping beforehand. So it may have been, you drilled 20 wells

22:57 and it just so happened that the five really good wells We're in this zone, but yeah,

23:05 it kind of gets. crazy. The coolest thing about all of this, and I know I'm staying the obvious is 2 million acres, you get to play with all 2 million acres. And it's very thick. Yeah, you're

23:16 not talking about 10 feet, you're trying to stand, you know, in geo steer and try to rise, we spot it's, you have a round of 500 foot section, you're picking the best 70 feet within that 500

23:28 feet. And so, you know, just because of the scale, you don't have this more small margin of error, you know, you have in some of the basins here, it's like such enormous opportunity, or such a

23:44 normal scale, both from a acreage perspective, but also from a how thick the shell is. And so that's a, it's a real positive. So two wells are down and drilled now. So we have two wells that are

23:57 that are down, drilled and drilled in case. And we have a Liberty frack crew that is mobilizing and should be pumping them. first,

24:09 first fracks here in the next week. Oh, cool. So we'll do zipper fracks. So we'll do the frack job over both wells back to back. Okay. And start flowing back probably in February. Okay, how

24:23 far apart are the weld boards? So they're about, I would say, about 20 feet. So it's quite close. Yeah

24:35 Yeah, they're about, I think they're about 700 feet separated at the reservoir level. Okay. So they have some delineation in the well. Oh, wow, okay. So yeah, you'll potentially see each

24:52 frack and the other interesting. Yeah, no, that's cool. So we'll get into, the other thing, I think from an optimization perspective, coming back to your original question, is that we're going

25:05 to likely. In the next series of wells I share, we'll have some micro-sizemic that we're gonna run. So that'll be able to really give us more data about the effectiveness of the FRAAC, so. Yeah,

25:18 that's interesting. I'm so jealous, 'cause this is, I was telling Brian that when we were eating crab in the middle of Singapore. I'm like, I'm so jealous. You get to actually do a lease

25:30 syndrome with two million acres, so you can afford to be thoughtful You know, a lot of times if you had your 10, 000 acre postage stamp in the United States, you screw up one thing, you've messed

25:42 it up, so. That's cool. So we'll know about that, call it maybe March. March, March, early April. We'll get a 30-day flow test that we report to market. Oh, okay. So we're excited about

25:58 that. That's a near-term catalyst for the company And then is to bring target our on first production.

26:06 first half of 26. So well, depending on the performance of the first two wells will guide how many wells we need to drill to feed into a binding gas sales agreement we have with the NT government.

26:19 Okay. It's 40 million a day for 15 years. So right now we're carrying four additional wells this year that we'll drill after these two wells. We could get to a situation if we have better

26:31 performance that will need less wells to fill that gas sales agreement. Okay. So that'll be the that'll start in first half of 26 and then you know the performance of those up to six wells will

26:47 guide our planning on the additional drilling that we need to develop a much bigger development. So you basically vent for 30 days to get your to get your 30-day test and then depending on that

27:00 you'll figure out how to tie in. Correct. How hard is it gonna be tie in. So we got. We have a deal that we've signed with APA, is the Kinder Morgan of Australia,

27:11 APA. We've signed a binding deal to have a tie-in pipeline to the main line that goes to Darwin, where we're selling the gas at the local gas plant. That power is about 95 of all the electricity in

27:26 Northern territories. So where you flew into in Darwin, it's a pretty small community. It's only about 260, 000 people And so they feed all the electricity from the gas power, gas-fired power

27:39 that we're feeding into. So

27:43 that'll be key for the government. It'll be key for the Northern territory. We think that's key to building social license in the territory by literally our gas keeping the lights on in the

27:56 territory.

27:58 So that's by design Any worries about having the wells shut in for six months?

28:06 In terms of potential performance, we think what we've seen

28:12 is when we shut in wells in the beat-a-loo and bring them back on after a long period of time, we actually see better performance and this relates to the 12 billion year old rock because it's highly

28:23 desiccated, which is, it's a desiccated as

28:27 a word for being very dry So it's like a sponge, so when you pump your frack, what you see is your fracture, it basically just drinks all your water, you only get about 15 of the water back,

28:41 whereas in the US you might get 60, 70 of the water back in the beat-a-loo because it's so highly desiccated, you only get about 10, 15 of the water back. So what happens is when you shut in,

28:52 that water continually migrates through the shell and has these micro fractures that continue and when you bring it back on, those new fractures. highway pathways for the gas to flow kind of result

29:08 in around 30, 40 better performance after you shut it in. And we realized this, and this is something that's studied by PhDs, some of the some desiccated shells in the Marcellus, and so there's a

29:20 lot of literature on this, but because the US gas guys have been so focused on getting production on as quickly as possible, they've never tested the thesis. Well, it was religion that you gotta

29:32 get the water off the shell, and with Grenadier, we had a 40, 000 acre position kind of in West Virginia, and we fracked a well, and we had a mudslide. So we had to shut in, and we weren't able

29:48 to get back to that well for 120 days, and we were worried. We turned it on, and we'd already internally kind of written it off, you know? This is gonna be bad, the water's been sitting there

30:00 First things first, we got no water production.

31:02 run tubing, that ended up taking four months. So we ran the tubing, brought it back on, and it was 34 better.

31:11 And our guys really took note of that. And then when we formed the partnership with Brian, we started sharing some of this information about, hey, you need to shut these wells in to let them soak

31:24 a little bit before you bring them on and cut on your IP30 So these two wells that we have

31:32 getting ready to do a test, we have a short soaking period, but the real exciting bit is after we shut in, after 30 days, we'll have about up to nine months that we're gonna wait to get on the,

31:44 bring the pipeline to bring the gas on production. And so we're gonna get a chance to see how the production,

31:55 so it compares from the 30-day IP to nine months later, after nine months of being shut in, right? you know, and if that's a linear relationship, that's going to be super exciting to see kind of

32:06 the performance of the time and the period. So we'll see. Interesting, interesting. So a couple of other things I wanted to ask about any worry about the politics in Australia. I think - I always

32:20 worry about it. I worry about it every day. Fair

32:25 enough, no, 'cause I mean, I think except for a two-week period in Great Britain, the Northern Territory is the only place that's had a fracking ban that's then lifted the fracking ban. That's

32:38 right, that's right. I mean, look, I've been in this job 12 years, so I've seen a lot of ebbs and flows of politics in Australia, both at the federal level and the state level, and you

32:48 mentioned the moratorium. You know, that got put in in the territory right after the Amundji one well was one of the first horizontal wells and

32:58 the beat-a-loo was fracked and brought on. 30-day IP, they put that fracking moratorium on literally within a month, about a month of getting that result. We put out a video of

33:12 Alex talking about, they knew they had to get this fracked, so they had any sort of data to kind of

33:22 fight this fight. Yeah, Alex deserves a lot of credit. The origin team, there's a gentleman named David Close, who was previously with origin, he's now in the University of Queensland, but

33:34 there was some guys in that little short period of time that deserved a lot of credit because they got that data point that I think allowed there to be light at the end of the tunnel when it came to

33:47 the moratorium and some of the reviews that took place, of which there were a lot of regular, you know, primarily a regulatory exercise around how do we install new regulations to protect. you

34:00 know, some of the concerns that the community were having, uh, primarily on water. Um, but the other aspect was, is this base and commercial at all? Right. You know, this is that, well,

34:11 that was the proof at least in my mind. That was, that was when I found out about that well, and we were literally standing out at the well, right, uh, talking about it. And it was a million a

34:23 day for 90 straight days, something like that. Right. That even though that's not economic, I at least go, okay, Brian, in my mind, that's the proof of deliverability that if we do things

34:34 right, you know, I can, I can see why you'd want to drill more wells here. 100. And,

34:42 you know, that, that was a great data point leading into that fracking moratorium, which was a little, it was very difficult for the industry, you know, think about where we were in 2017, You

34:54 know where,,

34:56 you know, Orgin and St. Toss were both the major operators out there. But they had different priorities. There was this overhang of uncertainty around the regulations and whether they were

35:08 actually going to come out of a moratorium or not. And then fast forward, they came out of the moratorium in 2019. Santos killed two horizontal wells quickly thereafter, but then we went right

35:21 into

35:25 COVID. And then there was a change of government on the federal side to a left-leaning government that put in a lot of new regulations at the federal level. So

35:36 one of the people asked me a lot, kind of why hasn't

35:41 the beat-a-loop been developed yet? Why has it taken over a decade to get to this point? And I think the short answer to that is because other than this Amundji one flow test, There hasn't been

35:55 enough window of time and to generate the information that you need for people to get excited about the commercialization of the basin because it's been the headwinds that we've had with the

36:09 regulations changing and at the state level, regulations changing at the federal level. And the other aspect is that when you look at all the early stage basins, it was independence that came in

36:22 and were aggressive and really got the initial data points and then the bigger companies came after that. And I think that's what's going to be happening here in the beat-a-loo where the aggressive

36:34 independence are coming in, doing a lot of early work now that the regulations have been set and that's not an overhang anymore, that gives the pathway for a bigger company to get comfortable around

36:47 putting billions of dollars to work and creating a bigger development. The other thing that I think was happening in the United States is you had, to your point, the independence. created the

36:58 Shell Revolution, then the big guys go, Oh, we can toggle on capital fairly quickly. Exxon decides to buy XTO later, pioneer, et cetera. You had them go inward facing, and so running around

37:15 looking in the Northern Territory in Australia, just what not in anybody's list. No. No, the timing was not right, but to be to attract a bigger company, and we were very fortunate to be in the

37:30 right place at the right time when Origin was wanting to get out right in the peak of ESG.

37:39 They were having a lot of issues with respect to activists coming on their share register and causing a lot of problems at their general meetings, and they didn't want these headaches. To

37:50 your point, it was too early for a big company to get interested because they didn't have the long horizontal flow test and they just had to munchy.

37:59 Right. One well. Right. And so it sort of created this perfect storm for us to kind of approach origin. I flew to Austin, met with Brian and said, Brian, like, you know, he'd already become a

38:13 shareholder of Tambrand, but like, for us, you know, I pitched him this big, big, big vision. And 'cause I knew I needed someone like Brian that had that entrepreneurial spirit that, you know,

38:28 had a presence here in the US had, you know, connectivity with a lot of the funds that he made a lot of money for at Parsley. And again, it was the right place to write time for him as well. Yeah.

38:40 You know, coming out of Parsley in '21 and then '22 is when I flew to Austin to pitch in this big, big plan. Yeah, I don't detect an accent. So you're not Australian by birth, are you? No, no,

38:52 no, no.

38:54 I was born in Birmingham, Alabama Okay. my dad was in the Navy. So he was Pensacola, Florida was where I grew up and went to University of Florida. So I was recruited by Exxon out of Florida

39:09 where I spent about 10 years in Houston. What was the discipline coming? Mechanical engineering. So you're a mechanical engineer and you can't.

39:18 So I didn't, I have, people have tried to put an accent to me. It's funny because when I go back home, my Alabama, Southern Twain comes out and then when I'm in Houston,

39:30 a lot more Texan, Twain, I guess, and then I spent a lot of time in New York marketing. Yeah,

39:38 that was going to be my final question. What's it like being a public company and doing the IPO, all that stuff? Man, it was a heavy lift We were the first company to complete an IPO in the US.

39:57 as a non-revenue EP company in 13 years. I would have said longer than that, but 2009. Wow.

40:09 And that was my previous company at work for Cobalt. Okay, yeah. So, a billion dollar IPO we did there. So it's been a long time and

40:21 we had the, kind of the broad strategy was we recognized in order to be well-capitalized, coming into a development phase of this beat-a-loop, we needed to be connected to the US markets,

40:36 primarily to have access to debt and equity and investors that have made a lot of money in US Shell, they understand LNG, which are a big part of our business plan,

40:49 and have deep pools that we could access And,

40:55 you know, we're very fortunate.

40:59 to get away at IPO. It was, you know, we met with over 200 investors. Yeah. There's a lot of interest. I didn't think you were gonna be able to get it done. I wasn't trying to be, you know. I

41:09 think a lot of people need it. A lot of people need it. But I was like, Brian, what are you doing? Yeah, a lot of people felt that way. Yeah. And I think, you know, I'd give a lot of credit

41:17 to Brian on, you know, opening a lot of doors from, you know, people that he's close to in the capital markets here in the US, Blake London Yep, you know, on his team, you know, they put

41:29 their shoulder into this. And, you know, we have a lot of guys on our team as well, tied to the capital markets. And so, you know, my approach is you've got to have a thousand conversations,

41:39 man. You've got to just - No, Troy. You've got to hit it, hit the road and you've got to talk to everyone. And I feel really positive about getting the IPO away, but what I feel the most

41:50 positive on is the fact that we've educated, you know, lot of investors that are waiting on these two well tests and they just couldn't get there on the IPO because it was a little bit too early.

42:03 But once we get through a couple of these milestones, I think there's going to be a lot of momentum that gets built from a lot of people I've already spent a lot of time with and understand what I'm

42:13 trying to accomplish and that are sold on the beat-a-lose subject to.

42:23 You'll appreciate this. I think he's a great guy. I actually interviewed him for a job when he

42:33 was coming out of school.

42:36 Randy Bayless has been a friend for a long time When we were down in Australia at Tim's Pub, I actually said, You're seriously charging Brian for buying shares on the IP. Exactly. Exactly, Randy

42:54 Bayless, baby. Randy said a long, very formal email back, and I go, I'm sitting here with Chefie, I'm just messing with you.

43:02 Just messing with you. But yeah, Randy is a beast. And again, I give a few people credit for the IPO. I think it's, Brian, Randy is high up there. He's one of the best bankers in the industry

43:19 And he brought this Bank of America

43:25 as a firm, one of the leading capital providers to their industry. And

43:31 those guys are top quality, blue chip. And I think without them, we had some great lawyers on

43:41 that shape, the S1, and he'd lay them Watkins, and those guys are top notch as well So I think my vision was, you know, we got to do, you know, everything in a blue chip way. Right. You know,

43:55 we got a blue chip, largest shareholder in Brian. You know, we have a group of guys on the transaction that are signal to the market. This is a real, you know, a blue chip type IPO. And then

44:08 the other thing that helped was just having partnerships with HMP and Liberty who the US market has a lot of respect for. And I think, you know, a lot of investors said, look at this, if this

44:20 investment thesis is good enough for HMP and Liberty, obviously they're biased with having services tied to it. But, you know, Chris Wright was obviously someone well respected in our industry and

44:32 the US capital market as well. And so, you know, that validation, I think, helped, you know, sell our story quite a bit. Yeah, no, it's gonna be interesting to watch and see what, so have

44:45 you publicly said what you think, quote unquote, successes for these two wells expectations. Yeah, it is for these wells. Yeah, essentially what we've guided the market toward is replicating the

44:58 productivity that we saw in our 500 meter horizontal. That we saw, you know, 32 million a day over 500 meters. So if you think about a 10, 000 foot lateral and assume the same productivity, that

45:14 would be up to 18 million a day. That would be up there in the top quartile of Marcellus type performance 18 million a day over 30 days. So you've got a 10, 000 foot horizontal. Correct. And so

45:28 like the actual flow rate 18, let's say it averages 18 million a day. Yep. For 30 days, okay. So that's kind of what we put out there. Now, a couple of things to note. One is that 18 million a

45:41 day equivalent flow rate that we saw in the first well, that was done with a Australian frack equipment. Right. So that was about 35, 000 horsepower. Yeah. We're dealing with 80, 000 horsepower

45:56 on the Liberty equipment.

45:60 You know, we pumped up to 2, 250 pounds per foot. We're pumping up to 2, 800 pounds per foot. Right. It's a bigger, you know, hitting it with a bigger hammer.

46:10 And, you know, we're pumping more stages per 10, 000 foot. So, you know, we only pumped 10 stages over 500 meters So, that would be equivalent to 60 stages over 10, 000 feet. So, we're, you

46:23 know, we're pumping 14 more stages. So, I wind up on Twitter and in text and DMs, getting this, walk me through the IPs of all these Australian wells and stuff. And I feel like the Nate Bergazzi

46:37 playing George Washington thing. Nobody knows.

46:42 'Cause I can't do the,

46:46 The conversions in my head or even come close to it. We had this issue in the IPO. We had to convert everything to feet. That's what the US investors want to see it. So I go between meters and

46:55 feet 'cause I sit on both. You know, I'm talking to Australian people as well as US people, so. And you're a mechanical engineer, so you can do it. I was a finance guy that was like, If you

47:05 give me more than seven numbers, they don't cost you, give me my sentence, I need to know So 18 million a day for 10, 000 feet is what we're trying to replicate. Right. Nothing more, nothing

47:18 less. Have you taken it a step further of saying, 18 million a day for the 10, 000 feet, gives me an X, Y, Z, U, R? Yeah, sure, yeah. Yeah, so if you model this like a more cell-less type

47:35 curve,

47:37 that would be equivalent kind of one to one, so 18 million a day would be equivalent to about 18 BCF Okay.

47:45 We're not going to know the ultimate EOR or get comfortable the ultimate EOR until we get 12 months out on the production. Oh, as I used to say, that's the ultimate time to use the Bergazzi line.

47:57 Nobody knows.

47:59 We would be

48:04 sitting there watching wells. And I mean, the difference between a 12 and a 13B factor, I mean, that's, that's sometimes five years And

48:17 that's the purpose of the pilot is the pilot is great because it gets first production on. We get first revenues into the company. It helps energy security in the territory and build social license

48:28 does all of that. But as an engineer, the biggest thing we're going to be able to do is demonstrate without a doubt, what a type curve looks like in the beat-a-loo And right now we're saying it's a

48:41 Marcellus type curve,

48:44 The rocks look very similar to the Marcellus in you know initial 90-day flow test We had in the last will lines up with the Marcellus type curve But there's a good chance that these type curves in the

48:55 b-loo, you know could be you know better than the Marcellus So it's we're not gonna know that until we have a 12 months of flow So were you more ops engineering or reservoir during your 10 years?

49:08 It's more reservoir. It's more reservoir. Okay So I had to if you were if you were ops, I was gonna have to give you the speech don't change every freakin variable Well, all the ops engineers.

49:19 They just want to optimize everything. It's like no no you change one variable So you can measure it. Yeah, rather the war guys get that. So yeah, I get that Yeah, that's why I'm like keeping

49:31 the design very tight for these wells Yeah, and the the concept is to prove you are pro well But also show learning curve from right or well sex. So if you do like variations in your well design and

49:44 Right. You're changing stuff on your completion design link. I want to just see a cost learning curve that, you know, goes from, you know, you know, linear, you can get down to sub, you know,

49:56 15 million US, well.

50:00 And, you know, we're doing a lot of things to optimize, but if you're to your point, if you do a lot of changes, you're not gonna be able to accomplish that. Yeah, particularly if you get an

50:09 unexpected result. Yeah Well, we were sitting in a board meeting one time and great CEO, loved the guy, but he was the operations engineer that literally had 15 ideas to optimize on everything.

50:24 And we're going through there and I looked at him and we'll just call him George, change the names, protect the NSR, go George. You do know there have been more three run or more innings in Major

50:37 League Baseball without a home run than with a home run George looked at me. Oh, is that true? You know what? I go, yeah, I go, singles and doubles actually matter. So it's just all this and,

50:48 you know, he was like, okay, I get that and it changed the whole meeting. And all later that night at the board and dinner when I was drunk, I made that shit up.

50:57 Well, I have the speech I've given my team and Brian's heard it as well, like around the JV table. And when we think about these next six wells, I said, guys, we're on the first tee and we're

51:09 just trying to put a five hour in the middle of the fairway. Exactly That's all we're trying to do. We're not trying to pull it back like John Daly and cut off the dog leg and be a hero. Like,

51:20 this is no time to be a hero. Yeah. I'm 12 years into this job. Right, right. I've been building toward this moment. Right. There's so much, you know, sweat equity that's gone into this, but

51:32 not just myself, but, you know, people like Philippa Quigley, with Falcon. Right. You know, he's been at it, I think 13 years, when you're more than me, you know, there's others and Brian

51:44 has over150 million is all money into this. Right. You know,

51:49 this is, we just got. Alex Underwood is very interested in watching what you're doing. Yeah, 100. So we're, like, there's a lot riding. And so we don't, this is, you know, we get five years

51:59 down the road, we can optimize, we can maybe pull it back a little bit and put a three wood, start getting up through the driver, but right now, we just put a five iron lace it, ride in the

52:10 middle of the fairway and get this play moving No, I like the fact that you're drilling the, I like the fact that you're drilling the six wells in the same area, 'cause a lot of people would be, I

52:21 got two million acres, one here, one here, one here. It's like, no, no, let's find something we can make a 25 rate of return on and repeat that for a while. Yep, and I've set around the table

52:34 with the biggest companies in the world, one of my ex-company I started out with And, you know, the design of the program, the six-well pilot, followed by some 3D seismic around that pilot area,

52:50 plus there's a few other delineation wells we wanna drill and get to a multi-BCF a day to type development. That plan that we now executing, that is what bigger companies wanna see as well. Yeah.

53:05 So I've asked Exxon directly, like how would you, if you had a clean sheet of paper, five million gross acres. Right What would you do? And after a lot of conversation, you know, it was

53:18 basically what we're doing. Yeah. You know, they, you know, they, two things. You need to show EUR and show that consistently over multiple wells. So type curve, 12 month type curve. And you

53:33 just show kind of a cost learning curve. And so, and you need to have real US equipment out in the basin so that, you know, HP Liberty. You need to have a sand solution. So we'll have a sand

53:46 solution in place next year.

53:50 And, you know, if you show me that data and you know, that'll be a pathway for a bigger company to come in. And quite frankly, that's what they do well. Right. I mean, you're a great guy and

54:03 Ryan's a great guy. And if y'all wanted to, y'all could grow into that, but it's gonna be there. They're a Bailey Wake at some point Yeah, and that's, again, the role of the independent.

54:17 Totally. So you think about it, you come in, you get your hands dirty, you elbow around, and you've seen it over time, many, many times here in the US where the independent comes in and kind of

54:29 does the hard work and

54:32 gets his hands dirty. And the bigger company comes in and goes, look, we have a project management skills and, you know, a thousand engineers and, you know, we can come in and. that add value

54:45 at some point in the cycle. And I think the same will happen in the beetle at some point. So give me the finance bros stats. How many shares outstanding? What's the stock price? Yeah, so we

54:59 IPO'd at24 a share. We've traded down, I think primarily do the lack of liquidity kind of right after the

55:10 IPO. Yeah, they sold every share they could 'Cause you needed the money. Yeah, so

55:16 the performance coming out of the IPO has not been what we have liked, but as we've moved closer to this milestone around the two wells being drilled and flow tests coming up, I think we're starting

55:26 to see a lot more liquidity pick up and we're trending kind of

55:30 back to that IPO price. I think we're trading in the low 20s at the moment, but I think there's a better runway there as we lead up into the 30-day IPs later this.

55:43 it into this quarter. So,

55:46 you know, kind of, you know, shares outstanding as 17 and a half million shares. Okay. So that was post the conversion of the IPO of 400 ish million or three, 400 million dollar market cap.

55:58 Gotcha. You know, and, you know, I think, you know, if if we have success in these two wells, we get on production, you know, kind of first half of 26, we can start trading at earnings

56:11 multiple that,

56:14 you know, if you get into that mindset, we're very cheap. Yeah. When you think about, I mean, if you start doing a dollar per acre, that's nothing. No, you know, so exactly. And I think,

56:24 so I think that's the near term catalyst. I think the other thing is that I think these two wells are going to simulate a lot of, a lot of interest for farming out some pieces of the acreage. Right.

56:35 So, you know, that could result in carried wells, getting some cash back. Right. You know, having more data points, one data points pushing you. closer into that EUR is exactly correct.

56:46 Correct, correct, so there's a couple of companies that we've been

56:51 in the data room talking through and we think there's an opportunity later this year to bring in another bigger company to help us carry us through the first wave of development.

57:06 So, and then that plus the first production in the first half of '26, I think there's a lot of upside beyond these two wells So, where do people find out? You've got a website? Yes, we have a

57:16 website, TBN, tambourinecom, TBN is our ticker.

57:23 You know, we're a public company, so you've got a big 500-page S1 out there. Part of the website, if you want to do a deep dive on the company's business plan. You know, we've been very

57:36 deliberate in a lot of the presentations, materials we put out there and the public domain to be very clear with it. what we're working toward, what our milestones are, and how we can create a lot

57:51 of value for our shareholders. And so that's something we're clearly very focused on the moment. Yeah, well, Joel, you were cool to come on and in effect do the repeat. Just so the listeners

58:04 know, right when Brian said, Yeah, you can come to Australia with me, Joeland a Dick Stoneburner just happened to be in town And they said, Well, hey, we'll come by. We recorded a podcast and

58:15 I sucked. It was really bad. Every once in a while, I re-record one of these 'cause the guest is no good. I mean, Joel and Dick were great. And I was like, What is that? I think I was talking

58:26 about Playboy magazine in the middle of it. But Dick was kind enough to come back last week. Yeah, great. So yeah, so we'll release Dick where we talk more about his career and everything he did

58:39 in this release. Appreciate you coming on. Welcome to Houston. Well, thank you very much. Sure, good to be with you.