Cooper Energy buys Santos gas assets
Cooper Energy’s $82m purchase means Santos will shed stakes in Victorian offshore gas fields.
Cooper Energy has agreed to buy Santos’s natural-gas assets offshore southern Australia for as much as $US62 million ($82m), driving up the exploration and production company’s output and bolstering its gas reserves.
For Santos (STO), it will mark an exit from offshore Victoria after it in March completed the sale of its interest in the Kipper gas field for $520 million.
Cooper (COE) it had signed a binding agreement to buy Santos’s gas assets off Victoria for $62 million in cash and a potential further payment of $20 million based on certain milestones for the assets.
The assets include a 50 per cent interest in the producing Casino-Henry gas project in the Otway Basin, which will be subject to approval by the operation’s partners, AWE and Mitsui.
Cooper also will gain full control of the Sole gas field and Orbost gas plant in the Gippsland Basin, buying Santos’s 50 per cent stakes.
Additionally, Cooper will pick up a 10 per cent interest in the producing Minerva gas field and gas plant in the Otway Basin, all of the largely depleted and non-operating Patricia Baleen gas field in the Gippsland Basin, plus acreage that may contain gas elsewhere in the Otway basin.
Santos said the deal is expected to be completed in early 2017, subject to regulatory approvals.
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