A Week Of Waiting (And Some Travel Notes)

The long vigils for Terri Schiavo and Pope John Paul II have accustomed us to waiting, if nothing else. This week and next the practice may come in handy as ERHC Energy (OTC BB symbol: ERHE) investors await the final notification from ExxonMobil to the Nigeria-Sao Tome Joint Development Authority as to which blocks they will exercise their two 25 percent preferential option in, if they decide to exercise them at all.

What we all hope is that like both of these saints, we go from an experience of living Hell to the financial Paradise we have so long awaited.

The exercise of ExxonMobil's will in turn kick-start a meeting of the JDA's Joint Ministerial Council, which will make and announce the final decision on the allocation of the five blocks on offer a few days later.

The Pope's death, however, may take Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo and Sao Tome and Principe President Fradique de Menezes, both Catholics and members of the JMC, to Rome for the funeral service expected to be held late this week. Also on the Vatican's invitation list may be Sir Emeka Chuka Offor, founder of ERHC Energy, who is a Knight of Columba, a distinguished London-based order of lay Catholics.

In that event, the announcement of the awards could again be delayed, albeit only for an additonal day or so.

We may not find out how their travel plans and the funeral may affect the awards until late in the week - perhaps Thursday - and so it is unlikely substantial news will arrive on Saturday or Sunday, when they would have just returned.

However, the fundamental work of the JMC is already done, according to almost all accounts, and the meeting is thought to be something of a formality. It is expected to last two days or less, leaving Tuesday, April 12, of the following week as the first possible occasion for the announcements, and Wednesday or Thursday, April 13 or 14, as the most likely.

The funeral will dominate world news this coming week as about 1 billion Catholics unite in long goodbye to their revered leader and expectantly await their new one.

Interestingly, the insider tips are pointing towards the selection of an African pope, and Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze is pretty much first among equals in the rumor mill.

Selection of a Nigerian as Pope John Paul II's succesor would trigger a vast and joyous holiday in Nigeria, and for the JDA it would almost certainly mean new delays.

However, we are conflating time periods here, as the Church gives itself five to six days to bury the late Pope but 15 days to select a new one. There is a week-long window of opportunity after the ExxonMobil decision for the awards to occur.

We have been woefully bad at predicting the near-term share price of ERHE except when we have offered a guess about a single day's performance. Thus, it came as a surprise to us that there were so many willing sellers at the current low price. Now our expectation is that the uncertainty about all these matters will persist through Friday and that we will not enjoy very strong gains until then. I hope I am proven wrong.

I expect a $0.02 to $0.03 gain tomorrow and a close around $0.75 until Thursday, when I would hope we would get news of Presidents Obasanjo and de Menezes'es plans and possibly drop a few cents. On Friday, I expect a $0.05 to $0.10 gain on strong volume, depending on many imponderables - too many to mention, I would add.

If we come out of the box Monday next with a clear decision from ExxonMobil that does not seem immediately contrary to our interests, look for a major shopping day - a $.15 to $0.20 boom.

Kobiashi and others on the ERHE Raging Bull message board have said lately that they wish I would steer away from share price predictions. That is not likely to happen, because I have to think about them every day and I think I owe our 1,500 readers at least a sense of my thinking. If all of you who appreciate my price tips will click an ad on Monday, April 4, I'll let you know what the results as a percentage of all readers say about it.

ERHC On The Move has earned $35,571.73 on its investment of $54,063.77 since early November (we had about 60,00 shares before that and until then they were losing money).

That's a return of some 65.57% on our investment in just five months. Now, though, we expect to make some real money - as much as $100,000 in a single week. Of course, it took two tough, frustrating years of hellish delays to get there, so it only seems like money made overnight.

In fact, it has been a nightmare experience that is unlike anything I have ever known, including the time I doubled on seven straight passes at the Golden Nugget crap tables in Las Vegas and picked it all up before I crapped out on the eighth roll. All my senses are working overtime, and they all tell me to leave my money on the table for at least one more long, long week.

And after that, who knows? I just may let it ride.


Travel Notes: A Visit To Saint Augustine

For those who wonder where we've been, my wife and daughter and I took the four-hour drive over to old Saint Augustine from Bradenton this weekend, which I still thought was a dead-as-a-doornail town with one old fort.

We arrived at 4am in a torrential downpour in a city that gets 48 inches of rain a year (Los Angeles, by contrast, averages 18). Frankly, I almost cancelled my resevations for Saturday night after the Ramada clerk told me rain was expected all weekend,and the closed lobby forced us to walk to and then wait in the rain at the night window. We never saw any more of it, though; the sun came out Saturday morning around 9am the weather was absolutely beautiful until we left.

I came looking for the old city walls I'd remembered from hitch-hiking though there on my way to Fort Lauderdale during Spring Break during my junior year of high school. The last I'd heard, it was a dead town with a lot of very old people and not much else. I had not been there in 40 years, and honestly, Saint Augustine was a terrific surprise.

This oldest city on America (ca. 1513) must be one of the hottest and nicest places on Florida's Atlantic Coast, with lots to do and see, plenty of young people and lots of restaurants, and for all its tourists a very friendly, appreciative place. It beats hell out of Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and Palm Beach. Those places are crowded, expensive, a little dirty and if not dangerous, not all that pleasant, either.

Saint Augustine, though, is relatively undiscovered, very lightly populated and inexpensive, and although they seem to have pretty much run out of parking, which runs $6 a day, it is a beautiful destination these days.

The parking issue may have been partly due to the 10,000-odd people who visited the big two-day arts fair there this past weekend, and to the city's credit, we did find a place close to the beachfront. When we didn't quite obey one fairly ambivalent parking sign as we ate dinner, we didn't get a ticket, either. That is a very healthy sign of a city that's going to make it. When cities like Boca and Beverly Hills start relying on tourist parking fines to fill their budgets, it's time to look elsewhere for fun.

St. Johns County, where it is located, has only 126,000 residents, so some of the land prices and the cost of living still lingers below even Florida's generally low cost of living.

Nearby is Anastasia Island, a low-key residential-and-resort island on the Atlantic that had a full-up Spring Break crowd of especially well-behaved young people.

We stayed at the Ramada, which was filled to the brim, for $89 on Friday and $109 on Saturday, a little lower than the usual rate but $40 and $59 more than with the Florida Visitor coupons you can get at Denny's and other chain restaurants along the way.

For the well-heeled ERHE investor, there is also the brand-new Hilton, where Paris Hilton is expected to cut the ribbon soon. It is an unexpected surprise, featuring a group of home-like Spanish-style buildings right on Bayfront overlooking the old fort and perfectly in tune with the older small hotels, private homes and cobblestone streets around it.

We took a coach ride for $54, saving $6 by getting the tickets at the Vistor's Center, and for about an hour a fellow named Bob filled us in on dozens of details as we passed America's oldest house, its oldest school house, clopped down its oldest European style street, and passed all the places the late Henry Flagler, a railroad baron, had built.

One of those, Flagler College, offers one of the lowest liberal arts school tuitions anywhere - $8,000 a year for its 1,600 girls and 800 guys (with room and board, books and health insurance, it's around $17,640, though).

I was amazed at this bustling and lovely little city whose Spanish fort is a wondrous architectural work, with soaring up-angled walls that take your breath away and sudden daily cannon blasts that send you leaping out of your socks.

I'm planning a return trip soon, and one of my first stops will be to see Cindy, the dark-haired beauty at FA Restaurant on Anastasia Island. We just came in to use the bathroom at this super little surfer cafe, and we left an hour later nicely impresseed with the mugs of ice-cold beer and neat little chicken quesadillas.

All in all, the weekend for three cost us just a little over $400, and I think that's a bargain these days. If you stay at the Ramada, in the older part of town amid some 27 very nice and somewhat pricey bed and breakfasts (see www.staugustineinns.com), it has its on nice small restaurant and microwaves and fridges in the rooms, say hello for me to the lady at the desk - the original Ruby Tuesday.

Remember the Boar's Head Inn in Carmel, Calif., Clint Eastwood's place? Well, Saint Augustine is the Carmel of the Atlantic Coast. Do yourself a favor and visit.