Global gold royalty company Franco-Nevada Corp. has agreed to purchase rights in the Stack Play in Blaine and Kingfisher counties, Okla., likely from Felix Energy II LLC.
Franco-Nevada owns rights to precious metals across the world, but saw plugging $100 million into Stack acreage as a worthy addition to its portfolio. Felix has since entered the Delaware Basin, where it is permitting wells.
The seller of the assets was not disclosed. However, Felix was estimated to have up to 15,000 acres in the Stack for sale.
Felix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Felix and Sooner Trend Minerals LLC, with which it shares founding members, were marketing a package of Scoop and Stack mineral and royalty rights earlier this year, BMO Capital Markets reported. Franco-Nevada said it purchased 16,865 acres of gross overriding royalty interests and mineral title with an average royalty rate of 7.15%.
Franco-Nevada said the top two operators of the acreage are Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE: NFX) and Devon Energy Corp. (NYSE: DVN).
Felix became an overnight Anadarko Basin celebrity in December 2015 when it sold its upstream Stack Play to Devon for $1.9 billion. After the acquisition closed in January, Newfield said about 50% of Devon’s Felix acquisition overlapped with its acreage.
Devon and Newfield have made the Stack a focus of their capital spending, a portion of which will be on the royalty lands, Franco-Nevada said.
In September, annualized revenue on the acreage was $3 million, which Franco-Nevada expects to grow with full-field development in 2017. The royalty acreage sits in the core of the play, the company said.
“Development of the Meramec is set to move north onto royalty ground as operators fully develop their lands,” the company said in a Nov. 10 presentation.
Felix continues to build a position in the Delaware Basin with a focus on Loving, Winkler and Ward counties, Texas.
Following the Devon sale, Felix spun off into Felix II, with a fresh $500 million in backing from EnCap Investments LP. EnCap previously backed Felix in the Stack.
In June, July and August, Felix was among the buyers of Energen Corp.’s (NYSE: EGN) sales of non-core Delaware assets in Texas and San Juan Basin assets in New Mexico for $552 million.
Most recently, Felix permitted four wells in Ward County.
Darren Barbee can be reached at dbarbee@hartenergy.com.
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