Link here. See comments below regarding who/what TRZ is. It should be the third comment down. [Following original post, more information came out; click here; at this site, scroll down to Hawkeye Spud.]
This is a Reuters story.
Subhead: "Follows $445 million acquisition in July same region; comes only a week after Williams Cos' $925 million deal there"
This, to me, is just another example of the "big boys" starting to get really interested in the Bakken, and more importantly for those bullish on oil, that they are feeling comfortable about where the price of oil is headed.
I started talking about this about two months ago that I expected to start seeing more mergers, acquisitions, acreage deals; very, very interesting to see it happening so soon.
The Hess deal:
- Increasing "its already large bet on the oil-rich Bakken shale formation"
- A $1.05 billion deal
- Acquires 167,000 net acres from TRZ Energy LLC
- The newly acquired acreage is near its existing acreage
- New acquisition has current net production of 4,400 bbls/day
- $1,005 million / 167,000 acres = $6,000 / acre
Hess' financials according to Yahoo!Financial:
- Market cap: $23 billion
- P/E: 9.4
- Total cash: $2.35 billion
- Total debt: $5.58 billion
- Operating cash flow: $4.32 billion (trailing twelve months)
The $6,000 / acre (Hess/TRZ) is less than the $8,000 to $10,000 / acre paid by WMB and ERF in recent deals.
Reuters again stated: among the oil shales [around the world], "the Bakken has the highest crude oil content..."
Note: in the article, it was noted that "Marathon's chief executive said this month his company would focus more on Oklahoma's Woodford shale next year because it represented better value than the Bakken."