On July 31, Athabasca announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to sell its non-core light oil assets for $160 MM. These assets were quoted as “its 70% operated working interest in Placid targeting the Montney, its 30% non-operated working interest in Saxon and Simonette targeting the Duvernay and other associated non-core Placid Montney.” Athabasca quoted the production involved as 3,000 boe/d.
A few days later on August 3, Murphy announced that “a subsidiary of Murphy signed a Purchase and Sale Agreement to divest a non-core portion of its operated Kaybob Duvernay assets and all of its non-operated Placid Montney assets.” These assets were quoted as “the Saxon and Simonette areas of the Kaybob Duvernay, where Murphy holds a 70 percent working interest as operator, as well as Murphy’s 30 percent working interest in the Placid Montney assets operated by Athabasca Oil Corporation. Also included are batteries, pipelines and the assumption of related processing and marketing contracts.” Murphy listed the production as 1,700 boe/d and proceeds of $150 MM.
Click here to see BOE Intel’s M&A database with these and other M&A transactions.
The buyer of both was listed as simply a private company, but now we can see on BOE Intel that the buyer was Cygnet Energy Ltd.
Applications have been filed with the AER to transfer (so far) a total of 108 wells, 15 facilities, and 26 pipelines from Murphy and Athabasca to Cygnet Energy. The affected locations from these transfers are shown on the map below. Both transfers are currently listed as pending AER approval. So far, no mineral rights have yet to be officially transferred but BOE Intel’s mineral rights transfer tool will pick those up if and when they do.
Cygnet brings over the former management team from Black Swan Energy, which sold to Tourmaline for ~$1.1 billion in the summer of 2021. At the time of the sale, the company was producing over 50,000 boe/d. At this point, we can’t see any mineral rights or well licences associated with Cygnet, so these appear to be some of the first assets purchased by the company since closing its initial financing with ARC Financial Corp. on September 14, 2022.
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