Ann: Santos responds to media speculation, page-104

and then there is Alaska - another elephant ( or should that be mammoth) outside reach of AU government and policy change.
Every season of progress that STO invests in Alaska makes it such a great forward asset to hold and a easy one to sell down if required.

I haven't looked at STO and WDS overlap in terms of overlap and possible future investment savings in regard infrastructure nor on the ability expand existing a current approved project knowing no competitive gas will come onstream from merged entity.

STO marginal cost for additional gas especially with Alaska and PNG imo just gets better going forward with so much infrastructure already inplace and finance sorted. That was teh cream long term holders and OSH refugees deserve before opportunistic takeover unless there are good metrics - not just insto game playing.

I still see STO with the greatest increase n gas with margin going forward and advanced with carbon sequestration as well so don't was to see a cheap bid succeed just because a CEO wants out and opportunistic as STO a ways away from paying dividend and still being undervalued by market. CEO doing nothing to adjust markets opinion showing pathway forward and possibly due to sensitive court cases happening but not doing shareholders many favors IMO.