takeover, page-81

"doubling the price overnight !!"

Lol

I'd set my sights on something a bit lower - say 10-15%.

As the legal beavers have mountains of paper to chew through, a prospective bidder has plenty of time to get his ducks lined up before he starts shooting.

Looking at MRO's enterprise value and reported 2P reserves, the current offer price for AUT would be non-dilutive (almost spot-on). Is this a coincidence by any chance????

So, MRO might have to consider whether AUT's 2P reserves are more valuable than its own reserves on average.

Well one big difference is tax. See slide 26 of MRO's presentation of 5 February 2014 (4th Quarter results):

US 36%
Norway 78%
UK 62%
Libya (wait for it!!!) 93% - they've been pulling out I think

Canada and E.G. (Equatorial Guinea) 25%

Their expected Q1 2014 production (slide 16):

US (@36%) 50%
Norway (@78%) 19%
UK (@62%) 4%
EG @25%) 12%
Canada (@25%) 15%

But (some, at least, of) the Canadian production seems to be from oil sands and they expect a price of about $79/bbl (slide 9). So what they might gain in lower taxation, they more than lose in netback.

So, leaving Canada out of the equation (low tax but on a low return), the average tax rate on the 85% of production is about 45%. So, adding a bit more taxed at 36% might not be viewed as dilutive even if they pay a premium for it (especially as there is no wildcat drilling risk or political risk).