Page 6 - NorthAmOil Annual Review 2021

NorthAmOil INVESTMENT NorthAmOil

Shale assets change hands

US A number of transactions involving shale oil and Pioneer’s exit from the Delaware.
gas assets have been announced or completed Asset sales continued into early January, with
over the past few weeks. Lime Rock Resources announcing two separate
The moves come amid stronger commodity acquisitions on January 4. The company said
prices, as producers attempt to refine their port- it had acquired Abraxas Petroleum’s Williston
folios. Transactions are taking place across a vari- Basin assets in North Dakota for $87.2mn and
ety of shale-producing regions. that it had also purchased Austin Chalk and
On December 16, Earthstone Energy said Eagle Ford properties in Texas from an unnamed
it had agreed to buy the assets of Warburg private seller for $271.3mn.
Pincus-backed Chisolm Energy Holdings for Lime Rock added in its statement that it
$604mn in cash and stock. The assets are located has acquired over $850mn worth of oil and
in the New Mexico portion of the Permian gas properties over the past four months. For
Basin’s Delaware sub-basin. This deal, along Abraxas, the sale of its Williston Basin assets
with the previous four acquisitions Earthstone turns it into a pure-play Delaware Basin
had made in 2021, has increased the company’s producer.
Permian net acreage by roughly 400%. The trans- Then, on January 5, Spain’s Repsol confirmed
action is anticipated to be completed in the first reports that it had bought Marcellus shale assets
quarter of 2022. in Pennsylvania from Rockdale Marcellus in a
The Delaware also saw another major deal bankruptcy auction for $222mn. And on Janu-
close days later, with Pioneer Natural Resources ary 6, FireBird Energy said it had completed an
announcing on December 21 that it had com- acquisition of operated assets in the Permian’s
pleted the $3.1bn sale of assets in the sub-ba- Midland sub-basin from Chevron for an undis-
sin to Continental Resources. This marked closed amount.™

Aethon reportedly considering

Haynesville asset sale

LOUISIANA PRIVATE investment firm Aethon Energy in December. Meanwhile, Chesapeake Energy
Management is reportedly exploring a sale bought Vine Energy for $615mn in November.
of its assets in North Louisiana’s Haynesville Drivers for the deals include private equity
shale gas play. Citing sources familiar with the players seeking to sell off oil and gas assets now
matter, Reuters reported on January 5 that the that commodity prices have strengthened. For
assets could be valued at around $6bn includ- the sellers, meanwhile, the Haynesville provides
ing debt. exposure to the booming gas market on the US
According to the sources, bankers hired by Gulf Coast, driven by rising LNG exports from
Aethon were gauging initial interest in the assets a growing number of liquefaction plants in the
among a small number of potential buyers in region.
the final weeks of 2021, ahead of a formal sale Not all deals have involved private firms
process that is anticipated to take place this year. being sold to publicly listed operators, though.
The sources added that Aethon’s assets in the In December, Paloma Partners VI Holdings –
East Texas portion of the Haynesville would not an affiliate of private equity firm EnCap Invest-
be included in a sale. They also said there was no ments – completed its acquisition of Goodrich
guarantee that any sale would go ahead. Petroleum. The deal, estimated at $480mn,
If a sale does take place, however, it would be resulted in Goodrich becoming a private com-
the latest in a series of Haynesville transactions pany and gave Paloma assets in a number of US
that have played out in recent months. Notable shale regions, including in the Haynesville.
deals have seen privately owned Haynesville Indeed, the Haynesville had been Goodrich’s
producers acquired by publicly listed players. main target recently, and accounted for almost
These include Southwestern Energy’s acqui- all of the company’s proven reserves of 543bn
sitions of Indigo Natural Resources for $2.7bn cubic feet (15.4bn cubic metres) of gas equiva-
in September and GEP Haynesville for $1.85bn lent at the end of 2020.™

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