Plato Energy: New Investment Opportunities. Plato Energy is an oil and gas exploration and development company located in Farmington, New Mexico. The company drills shallow wells in hopes of finding significant gas deposits. The firm is considering two different drilling opportunities that have very different production potentials. One is in the Branett Shale region of Central Texas and the other is in the Gulf Coast. The Gulf Coast project requires a much larger initial investment but provides cash flows (if successful) over a much longer period of time than the Branett Shale opportunity. In addition, the longer life of the Gulf Coast project results in additional expenditures in Year 3 of the project to enhance production throughout the project's 10-year expected life. This expenditure involves pumping either water or CO2 down into the wells in order to increase the flow of oil and gas. The expected cash flows for the two projects are as follows: pg. 1 a. Calculate the payback and the discounted payback period. b. What is the difference between the payback and the discounted payback period? Which of the two methods is better and why? c. If Plato's management uses a 15 percent discount rate to evaluate the present values of its energy investment projects, what are the NPVs and IRRs of the two proposed investments? d. What is your estimate of the value that will be created for Plato by the acceptance of each of these two investments? *all calculations should be done on excel spread sheet