Oh really leo43? Well then may be you can enlighten me...

Oh really leo43?

Well then may be you can enlighten me please?

From what I can gather, in the mid-cap space atleast, no oil company has a balance sheet powerful enough to buy Beach.

Beach is the probably the strongest and stable company within the mid-cap oil market, it IS the acquirer rather than a target.

What is possible is that a large-cap company is able to take over Beach.

However, is it likely? I think not. And why? Because firstly, unless I'm blind, Beach clearly has no so-called "tier 1", low cost, long life assets consistent with the tastes of large cap companies.

If it did, I highly doubt it would exist today as an independent energy group - Queensland Gas, Bow Energy, ESG, and well, slightly off tangent, even WMC Resoruces, certainly didn't make it on their own because their assets were too good.

In addition, all Beach has talked about is 'high potential big gas' and 'big oil' opportunities so far, so making an acquisition would not even make sense, given the risks.

To add to that I think:

BHP, Exxon, Conoco etc - have better things to do that spend lunch money on a $1.5b company
WPL - focused obviously on its huge and expensive projects
Origin - Full attention on APLNG
Santos - Full attention on GLNG
BG Group - may be but doubt it, I would expect they are only interested in very high potential coal seam gas

This is my view anyway. I'm happy if it goes up, but no way will it get bought.