What's With This Damned Price?

Do you ever feel like a guy stranded on Mars, waiting for a rocket that never comes?

ERHC Energy's share price must leave a lot of investors feeling that way. Where is the "ignition" so many posters promised, where are the +$2 - $3 gains everyone was waiting for when these presumably priceless blocks of oil got signed?

Why, after acquiring tens of millions in cash and rights to some of the most promising oilfields on earth are we still at what - $0.975?

Today's share volume indicates that the market isn't all that interested in a string of Reuters stories telling the world that our Block 2, 3 and 4 rights have been perfected with the signing of contracts yesterday for 3 and 4 and today for Block 2.

Perhaps the failure to launch once again instructs us that a) the market is never as bullish as shareholders are; and b) the message boards are full of people who are either wildly optimistic or just plain wrong most of the time.

But still, there's lots to say for a stock that has appreciated more than 100 percent in the past two months, and has survived countless challenges from the treacherous envirobnment in which it operates. There was the disastrous probe mounted by the Sao Tome and Principe attorney general, the withdrawals of each of our three of our high-profile U.S. partners, and the thousand other natural shocks that shares are heir to.

But where is that elusive giant payoff that makes millionaires of ordinary men? Still elusive, I'm afraid, waitng on even better news than we've already gotten.

If a huge Chevron find is announced that does indeed play deeply into our Block 2 from their Block 1 as rumored, surely that will lift the share price above $1. Will that happen?

In either case, we're out for the moment, mindful of the enormous sell-downs that hit other gains, but wary, too, that even so, this time it may be different. Perhaps ignition, like the shuttle lift-off scheduled for this week, is merely delayed, not scrubbed.