big news , page-57

I have to agree that the posters to the BPT board on HC are particularly knowledgeable.
As I have posted before, the risk of a takeover should concern long term holders, as the potential to dilute these assets, that have been meticulously (and luckily!) collected, into the portfolio of a major will dilute the potential increase in value to current BPT holders.
A positive outcome would be that BPT can find a partner for the shale development, but without an accompanying equity stake in the rest of the business.
Such an approach would preserve the very pleasing cashflows Auto has forecast from expanded conventional oil and gas, as well as the Tanzania exploration, while allowing the shale to be developed without straining BPT's capital budget.
If the consensus theory of an uncontracted gas shortage in 2015-2017 comes to pass, it will be critical that BPT is ready to deliver significant production volumes, and that is likely to require more capex on the shale resources than BPT have to hand, even allowing for the well time capital raising in April.
Of course, a GSA for the conventional gas out of the Cooper could potentially underwrite a huge chunk of that investment, leaving BPT in the box seat to develop the shale opportunity much further before bringing in any outside interests.
Remember too, that Beach's schedule calls for pilot shale gas production from next year, and you can see they are far, far ahead of anybody else with shale development.