What Anschutz did not say was who bought the rock or how much they paid in a deal that could easily be worth billions.
"Not the most helpful of press releases," Jefferies & Company analyst Subash Chandra said in a note to clients. "But a big package: 500,000 net acres, some production in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York. Public data shows them with just one drilling permit in McKean County, Pennsylvania, in the neighborhood of SM Energy."
Denver-based SM Energy was previously known as St. Mary Land & Exploration. McKean County is directly south of Erie in the northwestern corner of the state.
In August, India's Reliance Industries paid $6,300/acre for 63,000 net Marcellus acres and a joint venture with Houston-based Carrizo Oil & Gas.
Valued with that benchmark, 500,000 Marcellus acres would yield a purchase price of more than $3 billion. Analysts talking on background Wednesday speculated that the buyer is probably the kind of company for which a $1 billion deal would not have enough financial impact to trigger reporting
under US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.
China Chemical Weekly: http://news.chemnet.com/en/detail-1411716.html
