Lately, Oklahoma has garnered much attention, particularly with Devon Energy Corp.’s recent $1.9 billion purchase of 80,000 acres in the eastern Anadarko Basin’s Stack play from Felix Energy LLC.
Big deals in the Stack and bad commodity prices everywhere have diverted attention from the western part of the basin. So much the better for Denver’s FourPoint Energy LLC: On Feb. 25, FourPoint made a $385 million deal to purchase Chesapeake Energy Corp.’s western Anadarko assets.
While the Stack and Scoop soak up attention—and dollars—FourPoint is gaining control over 473,000 net acres further west.
After the acquisition closes later this month, FourPoint will more than double its position to 880,000 net acres from 410,000. The company may run a rig on the acreage in the second half of 2016, said Kamil Tazi, executive vice president and COO.
The deal includes 3,800 3P undeveloped locations. “Granted, only about 600 of those are economic at today’s prices,” Tazi said, but as prices improve, reserves and value will multiply.
“A moderate price increase will generate some very compelling economics,” he said. “We continue to believe that so much more potential is associated with the western Anadarko Basin. It is much easier for us at this point … to accumulate what we think is an unprecedented position in a world-class basin.”
FourPoint, naturally, wouldn’t mind being in the Stack or Scoop. But the sweet spots for those plays are tightly controlled by a handful of companies.
“The sweet spots have already been largely identified,” Tazi said. “There’s not a lot of guesswork as to where they are.”
Tazi prefers the western Anadarko’s potential. The Stack and Scoop have perhaps 3 million net prospective acres and four or five good benches.
“By contrast, if you look at the western Anadarko, [there are] close to 5 million net acres and arguably 10 to 12 benches that are prospective in the core,” he said.
FourPoint is the latest iteration of Cordillera Energy Partners. In 2012, the company sold 254,000 net acres in the Granite Wash, Tonkawa, Cleveland and Marmaton plays for $2.85 billion to Apache Corp. The company’s institutional knowledge of the Anadarko is likely among its most valuable assets.
“We’re very familiar with the geology and the petroleum system,” Tazi said.
FourPoint has mapped out the entire basin and has a well-defined understanding of the prospectivity of every section. It’s what guides its acquisitions, leasing and drilling programs.
The latest Chesapeake deal was hatched from its last Oklahoma deal—an $840 million transaction in August to purchase Chesapeake subsidiaries in the Anadarko Basin. The complex three-way negotiation among FourPoint, Chesapeake and GSO Capital Partners LP added acreage and 1,500 producing wells.
While evaluating the acquisition, FourPoint asked Chesapeake about its willingness to divest the rest of its western Anadarko holdings.
“We kept that conversation going, and we were able to leverage the relationships built over the course of the previous transaction to make inroads and ultimately come to a mutually agreeable arrangement,” Tazi said.
Although the production from the acquisition is gassier, the company is more interested in profitability.
“While we certainly are mindful of the product mix, in evaluating acquisitions we pay more attention to the cash flow, reserves, upside potential, fit of the asset and the returns we think it can develop,” Tazi said, “rather than strictly saying we’re only going to look for an oil asset or a gas asset.”
Operators have been exploring and drilling wells in the Anadarko since at least the 1930s. Horizontal drilling revitalized the basin and opened up even more ways to get at the resource.
The heightened interest in the past eight months in the Scoop and Stack is yet another leg in that evolution, as operators continue to gain greater understanding of the petroleum system and develop technologies to economically produce the resource, Tazi said.
FourPoint is being somewhat contrarian, he said, but it’s buying in an area he thinks is full of potential. “Let other people and operators spend premium dollars trying to acquire positions in an area we feel is pretty much locked up right now,” he said.
FourPoint, it seems, will stick to what it knows.