what price for a knock out bid?

There are a lot of eyes on this Co, AWE and ORG, to name just two. I can also think of a very large Aust producer which has recently appointed a new CEO and is reviewing existing operations with a view to i) farm in external partners to help meet the enormous capital requirements needed to develop it's offshore fields, and ii) looking to diversify its risk profile with other projects.

Why would such a Co be interested in NWE? It is currently obliged to deliver gas supplies into the local market which are largely sourced from its offshore fields. This is expensive for it when you consider that it also has pre-existing contracts to deliver gas from these same offshore fields for export at better prices than it can receive domestically. Make sense to look for a cheap onshore source to meet its domestic energy supply requirements and feed more of its offshore production straight into its existing export contracts? Pure speculation of course...

The recent off-market bid by Cooper Energy for SNE, despite BPT already being on the register, shows just how attractive Co's with good shale tenements are - you can't get anymore attractive than Perth's doorstep.

Predators are prepared to pay over the market price (in SNE's case nearly a 50% premium) in order to achieve a knock out bid, as well as raid Co's that may be viewed as belonging to another larger Co's backyard and thereby risk an all out bidding war in the process.

If NWE's frac'ing is commercially successful it is my honest opinion that it will be the last hole NWE ever drills/fracs, and all this talk of future cash raisings to fund further drilling and field development will simply become another larger Company's problem.

To me the only question is what would constitute a knock out bid for NWE - 15c? 20c?