Chesapeake Energy,the fracking pioneer that was the highest-profile casualty of the 2020 oil crash, is expanding in America’s biggest shale patch again, less than a year after its emergence from bankruptcy.
The Oklahoma-based producer said it would spend $2.6bn in cash and equity to buy Chief Oil & Gas, founded by Dallas billionaire Trevor Rees-Jones, and its partner Tug Hill in north-eastern Pennsylvania’s section of the prolific Marcellus shale field.
切薩皮克表示,還出售其懷俄明oil business to Continental Resources, controlled by shale billionaire Harold Hamm, for $450m. Chesapeake said it would use the proceeds from its Wyoming sale to partly pay for the Chief assets. The rest will come from cash flow and $500m borrowed through the company’s revolving credit facility.
The deals continue a consolidation trend across the US shale patch, where $66bn worth of transactions were announced in 2021 as a leaner, more profitable sector emerges from the ashes of the oil crash.
In November Chesapeake completed the purchase of Vine Energy, a producer in Louisiana’s Haynesville shale field, close to gas-export facilities on the US Gulf Coast. The deals rebalance Chesapeake’s portfolio towards gas. However, Chesapeake said it still wanted to keep oil assets and ruled out a sale of the company’s position in the liquids-producing Eagle Ford shale field in Texas.
Dealmaking has been brisk in the Marcellus in the past two years, where the lack of pipeline capacity to export new gas production has pushed operators to buy rivals instead of launching new drilling campaigns.
Chesapeake said the deal would generate enough new cash flow to pay for a 14 per cent increase in the annual dividend starting in the second quarter.