more than a bit interesting gq and I'd love to know how many SXY shares Royal Dutch Shell control right now, through its subsidiaries Arrow Energy and Bow Energy, after 7.35 million changed hands today. Someone was very keen to garner stock at the closing auction at 4:10pm with approx 520,000 traded at 75.5c SXY all time high. Remember last Friday's AFR article, "Big boys nosing around our shale gas", stated Conoco Phillips is keen on more local shale opportunities. But the next sentence said Royal Dutch Shell might also be having a look, given the gas needs for its Arrow energy LNG project in Gladstone, even after its $535million Bow Energy takeover. Incidentally the Senex market capitalisation figure must be almost exactly $700million and soon more when fully diluted by exercision of outstanding 40c and 65c options etc.
A Bloomberg news.com article today about USA shale gives some idea of the upward trending shale acreage prices. here are the first few paragraphs: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-09/shale-bubble-inflates-on-near-record-prices-for-untested-fields.html
U.S. Shale Bubble Inflates After Near-Record Prices for Untested Fields By Joe Carroll and Jim Polson - Jan 10, 2012 7:30 AM GMT+1100
Surging prices for oil and natural- gas shales, in at least one case rising 10-fold in five weeks, are raising concern of a bubble as valuations of drilling acreage approach the peak set before the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Chinese, French and Japanese energy explorers committed more than $8 billion in the past two weeks to shale-rock formations from Pennsylvania to Texas after 2011 set records for international average crude prices and U.S. gas demand. As competition among buyers intensifies, overseas investors are paying top dollar for fields where too few wells have been drilled to assess potential production, said Sven Del Pozzo, a senior equity analyst at IHS Inc. (IHS)
Marubeni Corp. (8002), the Japanese commodity trader, last week agreed to pay as much as $25,000 an acre for a stake in Hunt Oil Co.’s Eagle Ford shale property in Texas. The price, which includes future drilling costs, exceeds the $21,000 an acre Marathon Oil Corp. (MRO) paid last year for nearby prospects owned by KKR & Co. (KKR)’s Hilcorp Resources Holdings LP. In the Utica shale of Ohio and Pennsylvania, deal prices jumped 10-fold in five weeks to almost $15,000 an acre, according to IHS figures
SXY Price at posting:
73.9¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
