Like Watson and Kelvin, our new boy Yeager, has just said something that is likely to reverberate for a very long time – forever, perhaps.

“Our goal,” Mike said during an analysts and media briefing last week, “is to have 100% of our wells producing at 100% their maximum rate, 100% of the time.”

With all due respect to Mike the Eager Beaver, it won’t happen.

With less respect to Mike, who obviously wanted to impress on his first big public outing, it was a silly thing to say.

How does The Slug know this? Simple really, nothing ever works at 100% efficiency, always, not even The Slug.

This might come as a shock to Mike, but not everybody else in the Petroleum Patch, because we all know that shit happens, and Mike ought to know that because another part of his analyst briefing was spent apologising for delays at the Atlantis South oil field development in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the case of Atlantis, cost blow-outs and design enhancements demanded by US government regulators, represented the shit happening, and resulted in less than a 100% performance.

But before Mike gets annoyed with The Slug, or his hired PR flacks dash off a rude letter, consider some of the other great predictions from earlier times that have come back to haunt the great and glorious.

Tom Watson is the man who said in 1943 that: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Oops!

Lord Kelvin won his place in the Guinness Book of Silly Sayings with his 1895 prediction that: “Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”

The Slug, who dug up a list of bloopers that could keep his audience amused for days (a few more are at the end of this week’s ramble), suggests that New Boy Mike give serious reconsideration to his forecasts because, apart from providing a bit of light entertainment, they can come back as trouble.

To be fair, on this occasion, the man did say that having 100% of BHP Billiton Petroleum’s producing 100% of the time, at 100% of their rate, was a “goal”.

There’s nothing wrong with having a goal like that, and it’s good to hear that the new boy is setting himself, and his crew, an ambitious target.

But there is a country mile between setting an ambitious target that is achievable and setting a silly target that even Blind Freddie’s dog knows is nothing less than the hyperbole of a hyper-ventilating PR speech writer.

At best, Mike won a few media reports with a catchy, toss-away line, which is now wrapped around the dead fish from yesterday’s dinner. At worst, he looks a goose.

The Slug has spoken – but before signing off, a few more of those immortal clangers, just to make Mike feel that he’s in good company.

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,” Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment, 1977.

“Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction,” Pierre Pachet, professor of physiology, Toulouse, 1872.

“640K ought to be enough for anybody,” Bill Gates, 1981.

“We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out,” Decca Recording when rejecting The Beatles, 1962.

“Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” The response of workers to Edwin Drake when he tried to enlist them for his first oil well in 1859.

Mike Yeager, you’re in great company!.

Note: The views of Slugcatcher are not those of APPEA.