A Tasmanian is attempting to bring God to bear fruit for hydrocarbon exploration in Australia’s southernmost state.
Malcolm Bendall has been pushing the Great South Land Minerals ‘vision’ for years now, in fact since 1977 when he says he saw “a vision of large structures, onshore Tasmania, filled with oil and gas.”
Bendall may be relying too highly heavily on a consultant who, while having admittedly connections of the highest kind, hasn’t got a verifiable track record in the resources area. (Aside from the unsubstantiated claims from His PR machine that He created the reserves in the first place, and therefore is well placed to exploit abovementioned reserves)
Today it seems he will take his quest forward when his GSLM shareholders accept an offer to merge with a Christian-linked business group out of the United States.
In fact Bendall told EnergyReview.net from Los Angeles yesterday his company’s proposed merger with Empire Energy from Kansas had passed the 90% mark, thus avoiding any capital gains implications for investors (does this then make Bendall the Wizard from Oz?)
Where the fundamentalist Christian link arises is through the US-based Full Gospel Businessman's group. Empire Energy’s chairman is Richard Shakarian who is the Full Gospel Businessman’s international head. Bendall led the group’s Tasmanian chapter.
There’s a further twist which adds a bit more colour to the story – pun intended. According to Bendall’s vision, an Aboriginal elder was part of the vision, indicating he would place a cutting stone as a marker where to drill.
Sure enough, when Bendall was digging a water drainage trench at the 1995 Brunie Island well, he unearthed the very same marker stone the old fella had waved about in Bendall’s 1977 dream.
He said after the 1750 metre hole was swabbed, it briefly flowed gas to surface at 100psi with an almost 5% helium composition.
One should bear in mind there were around 250,000 gallons of oil produced from oil shale operations in the 1920s, so there is the basis for some form of hydrocarbon generation on the island state.
The story gets better. Bendall recalled some subsequent acrimony within the drilling partnership which resulted in the removal of the artefact from the drilling site and relocation back to Hobart.
Bendall said the responsible party then suffered a range of business and personal catastrophes until in desperation he returned the artefact to the Brunie Island well.
You guessed it – the recalcitrant’s life then returned to normality.
So at the close of business today in the US, GSLM will be a subsidiary of Empire Energy, a thinly traded OTCBB (over the counter bulletin board) stock which has moved between 29c in late February to 97c in early March and has now eased back to 58c last night.
Bendall, now a director of Empire, said he was currently engaged in a dual strategy of raising capital through a possible AIM listing or by attracting private drilling-based funds from the US and Europe.
