Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from Mark Gilman with Benchmark.
Mark Gilman - The Benchmark Company
Pat and Jim good morning to you. I wanted to talk a little bit about the timing on the ramp-up on Frade and Tombua Landana. Any particular reason that the plateau won't be achieved until 2011, with the second half 2009 start up. Is this a development drilling and rig constraint or something else?
Patricia Yarrington
No, I think it's really just the scheduling around when the producing wells are planned for startup Mark. It's a scheduled plan.
Mark Gilman - The Benchmark Company
There's been no changes in that Pat?
Patricia Yarrington
There's been no changes in that. We've been very consistent on those schedules for several months.
Mark Gilman - The Benchmark Company
Okay. If I can just add one other follow-up. The $100 million after tax charges the write-offs in U.S. upstream, could you talk just a little bit about what that is more specifically? And I'm assuming -- please correct me if I'm wrong that it's not included in the report of exploratory expense in the quarter?
James Aleveras
Mark, it's a combination of things that are primarily exploratory in nature but some of them runs through DD&A. They have to do with write-offs and write downs of exploratory wells, as well as things that are related to that, that we went through DD&A.
Mark Gilman - The Benchmark Company
Jim, that's not usually clear.
James Aleveras
Well. I can't be a whole lot more clear than that Mark. That what we have is fairly straight forward here. This is the sort of thing that we see regularly. We have increased dry hole cost quarter-over-quarter. We had things like an unproved property write-down, which runs through the DD&A rate and it's just a number of small items.
Mark Gilman - The Benchmark Company
Okay. We will take it offline. Thanks folks.
Operator
Our next question comes from Jason Gammel with Macquarie.
Jason Gammel - Macquarie Research Equities
Thank you, good morning everyone I had a couple of questions on Western Australian Gas. The first is with the Gorgon environmental approval process now essentially complete is there anything that stands in the way of final investment decision other the final partner approval and would you expect to be able to reach the final investment decision this year?
Patricia Yarrington
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