Royal Dutch Shell Plc moved a step closer to shifting the balance of its production in favor of natural gas over oil following a joint A$3.5 billion ($3.2 billion) acquisition of Arrow Energy Ltd.
The deal with PetroChina Co. will give Shell access to Arrow Energy’s holdings of coal-seam gas reserves, while conventional supplies are either declining or off limits in other parts of the world. Chief Executive Officer Peter Voser has described Australia as a “key growth” region for Shell.
Shell is focusing investment in Australia, the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. gas that’s found in hard-to-reach rock formations. As much as 40 percent of the company’s capital spending in the next few years has been earmarked for the Asia Pacific region. Shell, which has been adding more gas than oil to its resources since 2005, expects the share of gas as a proportion of total output to rise to 52 percent in 2012.
“This fits perfectly within Shell’s strategy to become a gas company that increasingly focuses on southeast Asia,”Peter Heijen, an Amsterdam-based analyst at Theodoor Gilissen Bankiers NV, said by telephone. “It will guarantee a solid cash flow in the future.”
Shell isn’t alone in seeking to tap Australia’s energy resources. The nation’s gas fields are attracting more than $130 billion of investment to supply customers in Asia.Chevron Corp. is leading the A$43 billion Gorgon liquefied natural gas project in Western Australia.
Biggest Purchase
Under the Arrow deal, Shell and PetroChina will gain control of Australia’s largest holder of permits to extract gas from coal seams for processing into liquid form for export. It’s the biggest Australian coal-seam gas transaction sinceConocoPhillips paid $5 billion for a stake in Origin Energy Ltd.’s gas assets in 2008.
Shell and PetroChina will pay A$4.70 cash a share for Arrow’s Australian business. That’s 5.6 percent more than an initial offer of A$4.45 and 35 percent above the stock’s level before Arrow was first approached on March 8. Investors will also get shares in a new company holding Arrow’s gas assets in China, Indonesia, India and Vietnam.
“The Arrow deal is not huge for Shell in relation to their total assets, but looks a reasonable price from Shell’s point of view,”Ivor Pether, who helps manage $9.7 billion of assets at Royal London Asset Management, said in an interview. “The partnership with PetroChina is another step in building relationships with an important customer.”
Arrow’s biggest shareholder, New Hope Corp., supports the acquisition offer, it said today. The coal producer, which owns almost 17 percent of Arrow, said it plans to vote in favor of the proposal in the absence of a higher bid.
Share Performance
Arrow, which fell 3.6 percent yesterday in Sydney trading, reflecting disappointment among some investors who had expected a bigger increase in the bid, dropped a further 2.2 percent to A$4.99 today. The stock had climbed 52 percent, reaching a record close of A$5.29 on March 18, as investors bet the initial offer would be sweetened.
Shell and PetroChina are paying less than similar deals in the past because of the global recession and weaker demand, according to RBS Morgans, an Australian broker.
ConocoPhillips and Malaysia’s Petroliam Nasional Bhd. have also acquired coal-seam gas assets in Queensland to feed planned LNG projects.BG Group Plc paid A$5.2 billion in 2008 for the rest of Queensland Gas Co., renamed QGC, to gain reserves.
“The world is a different place than it was a couple of years ago,”Nik Burns, a Melbourne-based analyst for RBS Morgans, said by telephone. “It was a very hot market back then. There were a lot more bullish forecasts for LNG.”
LNG Pricing
LNG prices are typically linked to the average cost of a barrel of oil imported by Japan, known as the Japan Crude Cocktail. “We were looking at close to oil parity pricing for LNG, and oil prices were up above $100 a barrel,” Burns said. “In that environment you can see why they were paying a reasonably high price.”
Shell and PetroChina’s offer values Arrow’s proven, possible and probable, or 3P, reserves at 59 Australian cents a gigajoule, compared with BG’s acquisition of QGC at 77 cents a gigajoule, John Young, an analyst at Wilson HTM Investment Group in Melbourne, said in a note.
“The price was arrived at after an extremely robust negotiation with Arrow over two weeks,” Shell Australia Chairman Russell Caplan said on a conference call with reporters. “This is a good premium for the stage of maturity of this project, with the significant investment to be conducted from now on.”