Well, the Supplementary Scheme booklet certainly outlines the power Macquarie wields and dare I say a more cynical person might take them as thinly veiled threats. ( I am sure they did not intend it to sound like that and not suggesting for one minute they are!!)
Section 2 outlines Macquaries involvement with CTP and includes such (abridged) comments as:
"..........MBL may elect to be repaid by taking revenue from gas sales contracts which Central has entered into after the pre-sale agreement date......"
"All activities at Mereenie can only be carried out pursuant to an approved joint venture budget unless a joint venturer elects to sole risk (ie - at that sole partys cost)......"
"The Joint Venture was negotiated with Santos and has not been amended since sale to Macquarie....." " .....both ...parties have a veto on the joint venture budget other than........required by law"
"...if a party....wants to sole risk a project, for example, aimed at maximising the gas available......on the commissioning of the NGP, the other party will need to elect to participate (taking into account, in Central's case...its loan covenants) or not participate and suffer the resulting dilution of its percentage of sales gas ............."
"As neither Macquarie Mereenie (nor Santos before that) has used a material portion of their entitlement under the Mereenie interim Gas Balancing Agreement, Macquarie Mereenie has substantial volume of gas to sell under that arrangement" "...............such sales do not contractually re-set or re-balance Central's over lift, ie these sales do not enable Central to re-commence gas sales from Mereenie unilaterally. It was always envisaged with Santos that eventually there would be a marketing arrangement agreement negotiated, hence the word "interim". The value ascribed to Central by the Independent Expert has assumed that further volume can be sold.......but given the change in joint venture arrangement this, as yet, is not assured"
(Note - My bolds)
Then of course we have clause 3 which covers
Other Hurdles
Below is clause 3.1 which includes a few
maybes and
coulds but (sort of) details other capital possibly required!!:
View attachment 598332
The inference in all of that is that Macquarie has everything tied up quite nicely thank you and the only missing piece is full ownership of CTP.
I will not be changing my No vote however it is certainly clear that any new BOD will have their work cut out negotiating around current agreements. It also suggests Macquarie could play hard ball under the terms of many of these agreements.
Interested to hear others thoughts on counters to some of these "hurdles"
