JS490 wrote "So nothing much new, as far as that goes."
Maybe this is a lot bigger news than the market is giving it credit for.
I think that the Managing Director (CEO) of Challenger/Bandu said it best:
"MD Robert Willes described the development as a “major milestone” and “very significant and positive news”."
The granting of exploration license changes everything for Falcon in South Africa - as now they will be able to start the planning for seismic work and delinination wells with all of that work taking much more than 8 months or more to get fully underway. This will also allow Falcon to start the real negotiations with Chevron as they will have a proper S.A. exploration license which wasn't the case before.
The Pasa announcement had this key statement which will allow the process for S.A. to get rolling much sooner than was anticipated only a few weeks ago, as it will be much longer than 8 months from now before Falcon/Chevron will be in any position to frack anything:
"Exploration work programmes, excluding fracking, could commence as soon as the exploration right was issued to a holder."
And we have a small bonus in that "no" other companies except Falcon, Bandu and Shell will be allowed to apply for exploration licences in the Karoo - but that is only a small bonus as these three have almost the entire Karoo sewn up.
