Breathe!

For ERHC Energy (OTC BB symbol: ERHE) investors, it's time to take a long, slow, very deep breath, settle down, and get prepared for what will be one of the most explosive weeks in the history of penny stocks.

After years of waiting through what seemed to be endless delays, the end finally came in the form of a letter to the company from the Executive Director for Finance & Administration and Secretary to the Nigeria-Sao Tome Joint Ministerial Council, Mr. H.A. Tukur, MFR, spelling out the two-day meeting date of the Council and promising that "ERHC will also be informed in respect of its validated options in the blocks."

In the elegantly overstated language of the JMC, what that means is that come next Tuesday or Wednesday, shareholders of ERHC Energy will finally be awarded their long-standing, much-disputed and hard-won rights to a minimum of 14 percent of all the oil in the nine blocks of the Nigeria-Sao Tome and Principe Joint Development Zone. It has taken seven years to get to this point.

According to a front-page article by Houston Chronicle Washington bureau reporter David Ivanovich, the JDZ holds an estimated 11 billion barrels of oil, and ERHC's 14 percent of that - multiplied by $53 a barrel - is more money than most people care to think about, but $81,620,000,000 in case you do.

Make that a real deep breath.

For some investors, every time ERHE rises a penny, their net worth rises thusands of dollars; $1,230 a cent in the case of ERHC On The Move, and 10 times as much in others. In the case of First Atlantic Bank PLC of Nigeria, a penny means $630,000; in the case of Sir Emeka Chuka Offor, it means $3,130,000. He enjoyed a $31 million gain on yesterday's 10-cent move.

Make that two deep breaths. Because what is coming is bigger than anything that has ever happened before. To little-guy investors like most of us, anyway. We may see $4.00 by this time next week.

There's a very clear prospect of getting awarded additional acreage with our joint bids with Noble Energy in Block 4 and Devon Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources in Blocks 2 and 3, and that could send those pennies cascading down around us like raindrops in a hurricane.

But even if we only get the blocks to which our debt-free company has treaty-guaranteed rights, well, it's more money - after the huge expense of drilling in deep offshore waters, of course - than most of of us ever contemplate.

As a well-tuned friend of mine says, "Someone's got to be in the catbird seat."

Have a great day, investors.

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