Merger With Oily Cimarex Casts Aside Cabot's Pure Gas Focus

摘要

Arguably the purest of Appalachian pure-plays, gas-focused Cabot Oil & Gas is dropping that strategy with a coming merger with West Texas-Oklahoma oil producer Cimarex Energy - a move that had a lot of analysts scratching their heads last week. The Cabot-Cimarex combo will create a $17 billion yet-to-be-named independent, and represents a stark deviation from the dominant M&A pure-play trend. The all-stock deal unites Cimarex's oily 560,000 net acres across the Permian and Anadarko Basins with Cabot's 173,000 net acres in the gas-rich Marcellus Shale. However, while their key assets might be thousands of miles apart and their production profiles seemingly at odds, "they share a huge problem together - inventory concerns," Atlas Consulting CEO Dallas Salazar tells Energy Intelligence.