Hackett Plans Heavy Investments With His New Oklahoma Shale Play
August 17 2017 - 5:50PM
Dow Jones News
By Lynn Cook
Oilman Jim Hackett said Thursday that his new Oklahoma
oil-and-pipeline venture would increase drilling in the Stack shale
play in Oklahoma over the next 18 months and spend heavily on
pipelines, storage facilities and gas-processing plants to speed
the fuel to market.
Mr. Hackett's Silver Run Acquisition Corp. II, backed by
Riverstone Holdings LLC, announced late Wednesday that it would buy
two companies with experience in the Stack: Alta Mesa Holdings LP,
a private exploration and production outfit, and Kingfisher
Midstream LLC, a pipeline company.
The combined companies, which will be renamed Alta Mesa
Resources Inc., will have a combined market capitalization of $3.8
billion.
Mr. Hackett, the former Anadarko Petroleum Corp. chief
executive, said he planned to helm the day-to-day operations of the
pipeline assets himself, working in partnership with Harlan
Chappelle and Michael Ellis, Alta Mesa's chief executive and chief
operating officer.
The new, combined company, represents a big bet on the Stack
play, west of Oklahoma City -- and one of the least expensive shale
drilling regions in the U.S. Alta Mesa already has more than 4,000
potential well targets in the area, he said.
"There are one or two careers worth of opportunities just in the
Stack," Mr. Hackett said Thursday in an interview with The Wall
Street Journal
When recently setting his sights on shale, Mr. Hackett targeted
Oklahoma over Texas because "the Permian Basin has been picked over
pretty well," he said.
Mr. Hackett said Alta Mesa plans to add new natural-gas
processing plants, then spin the pipelines and processing assets
out in an initial public offering of a master limited partnership
in early 2019.
Using the master limited partnership structure would allow Alta
Mesa to keep control over the pipelines while generating $3 billion
in value, almost paying for this week's transaction, he said.
Alta Mesa's wells on 120,000 contiguous acres in some of the
most prolific parts of Kingfisher County can break even around $25
a barrel, and produce as much as 80% oil and just 20% natural gas
in their first year of output, the company said. It will have 10
rigs drilling there by the end of 2018, Mr. Hackett said.
Add in the pipeline portion of the deal -- a 300-mile network of
gathering pipelines owned by Kingfisher, along with oil storage and
gas processing plants -- and Mr. Hackett considered it a good
bet.
Getting a critical mass of pipelines and process capacity in the
area is key to Alta Mesa's strategy. Combining Alta Mesa with
Kingfisher creates a kind of vertically integrated independent
shale producer that will get first bite at the apple for space on
pipelines.
Alta Mesa had already filed regulatory paperwork to prepare to
go public, because the company lacked the funding it needed to
really take off. Developing shale acreage requires near constant
drilling to generate output that can turn a profit.
The deal Wednesday marked the latest turn in Mr. Hackett's
storied history as an energy-deal hound, which goes back to his
days as an executive with Pan Energy when it merged with Duke Power
in the mid-1990s. That was followed by successive tie-ups between
Seagull Energy, Ocean Energy and Devon Energy Corp. As chief
executive of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., he oversaw two all-cash
deals to acquire Kerr-McGee Corp. and Western Gas Resources
Inc.
Investors this spring gave Mr. Hackett, who left Anadarko in
2013 to pursue a theology degree at Harvard Divinity School, a $1
billion check to go hunting for value.
Write to Lynn Cook at lynn.cook@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 17, 2017 17:35 ET (21:35 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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