LNG

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., the company with US onshore assets and a valuable stake in Mozambique LNG, has received a rival take-over bid of $38 billion from Occidental Petroleum Corp. after accepting a $33Bln offer in mid-April from Chevron Corp.

The competition to acquire Anadarko is expected to force Chevron to consider whether it will make a counter-bid.

“Following unanimous approval from the company's board of directors on April 12, 2019, Anadarko entered into a definitive agreement with Chevron under which Chevron would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Anadarko in a stock and cash transaction valued at $33Bln, or $65 per share,” said Anadarko.

“In accordance with the terms of the Chevron Merger Agreement, and in consultation with its financial and legal advisors, Anadarko's board of directors will carefully review Occidental's proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company's stockholders,” added the company.

“The Anadarko board has not made any determination as to whether Occidental's proposal constitutes, or could reasonably be expected to result in, a superior proposal under the terms of the Chevron Merger Agreement,” said Anadarko.

“The Anadarko board expects to respond to Occidental's proposal upon completing its review, and accordingly reaffirms its existing recommendation of the transaction with Chevron,” it stated.

Anadarko said its stockholders were advised to take no action at this time.

Analysts pointed out that Chevron is a substantial LNG player and operates two world-class plants in Western Australia and would have fitted with Anadarko’s development plans for Mozambique LNG.

The $33Bln bid from Chevron and the $38Bln counter-offer from Occidental would both be valued at an additional $17Bln because of the scale of Anadarko’s debt commitments.

Anadarko said on April 12 it had accepted Chevron’s bid after rejecting an initial approach from Occidental that fell short of a full bid.

Occidental’s business has no LNG assets and is centred on US oil and gas as well as midstream, marketing and refining. Houston-based Occidental is also a major North American chemicals manufacture.

The Anadarko-led Mozambique venture will be the African nation’s first onshore development, initially consisting of two liquefaction Trains with total nameplate capacity of 12.9 million tonnes per annum with feed-gas coming from the Golfinho-Atum gas fields located within Anadarko’s offshore Area 1 licence of the Rovuma Basin.

The Mozambique plant is being built near the port of Pemba in the northeast Cabo Delgado Province, about 900 kilometres north of Beira.

The Anadarko venture already has supply deals with European utilities Centrica of the UK and French utility EDF, the Japanese utilities Tokyo Gas and Tohoku Electric and energy companies, Royal Dutch Shell, China National Offshore Oil Corp. and Bharat Petroleum of India.

Before the Chevron bid was accepted, Anadarko had been planning to seek long-term charters for around 16 LNG carriers to ship volumes to customers from Mozambique.

The Mozambique LNG project and natural gas assets would also add to Chevron’s global LNG given its volumes from Australia’s Gorgon plant on Barrow Island in Western Australia and the Wheatstone facility at Ashburton in the Pilbara region, both operated by Chevron.

Anadarko shareholders are being offered 0.3869 shares of Chevron and $16.25 in cash for each share, valuing the equity at a total of $33Bln.

Under the Occidental bid, Anadarko shareholders would receive $38.00 in cash and 0.6094 shares of Occidental common stock for each Anadarko share held.

Thailand’s national energy company, PTT Exploration and Production Public Co, said it would speed up its final investment decision process for its stake in the Mozambique LNG project as it posted annual net profits of 36,202 Thai baht ($1.120 billion), a jump of almost 90 percent on its earnings in the previous year because of higher sales volumes and price.