Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. (NYSE: COG) announced Oct. 17 the sale of proved and unproved assets in Mid-Continent and West Texas for $188 million.
“The divestiture of our Marmaton and West Texas properties reflects our commitment to accelerating value within the portfolio by monetizing non-core positions and redeploying proceeds to our higher-return projects in the Marcellus Shale,” said Dan O. Dinges, chairman, president and CEO.
The assets include 66,000 net acres, current production of 2,000 barrels of oil per day (MBOE/d) and proved reserves of 8.4 MMBOE, as of Oct. 1.
Cabot sold its assets in the Marmaton play in Oklahoma and Texas for $160.1 million to Chaparral Energy, a privately held company. The Marmaton oil sale is expected to close on Dec. 18. COG sold its West Texas legacy conventional properties to an undisclosed buyer for $28.0 million. The assets include current production of approximately 260 BOE/d and proved reserves of 1.5 MMBOE, as of 2012 year-end.
The transactions averaged an implied valuation of $19 per proved BOE, $83,230 per flowing BOE/d of production and $2,850 per acre, said Gabriele Sorbara, an analyst with Topeka Capital Markets.
“These are great metrics for non-core assets, especially when considering the potential value creation to COG from redeploying the proceeds to the Marcellus shale, with IRRs north of 100%, and the Eagle Ford shale, with IRRs north of 50%,” he said.
Cabot can likely make up the lost production with an acceleration of the Marcellus shale and/or Eagle Ford shale “as the proceeds are more than enough to add a full-time rig in the play,” Sorbara said.
Evercore acted as financial advisor to Cabot on the transactions.
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