(Reuters) - Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones’ Comstock Resources on Thursday agreed to sell its assets in North Dakota’s Bakken basin to Northern Oil and Gas for $154 million, as it looks to shore up capital. Oil and gas companies have been looking to sell assets to take advantage of a rise in commodity prices as well as bolster cash reserves on their balance sheets for dividends and buybacks to counter investor pressure. Reuters reported last month that Northern was the front-runner to buy the stake. The sale includes a non-operated working interest in more than 400 wells, with production of over 4,500 net barrels of oil equivalent per day. Comstock said it expects to recognize a pre-tax loss of $130 million to $140 million on the divestiture. Comstock’s stake sale in its Bakken assets comes at a time when deal activity has been rising in Haynesville Shale, Louisiana, where the company produces most of its oil and gas. The company said it plans to re-invest the proceeds from the property sale into developing Haynesville shale, where it plans to speed up the completion of some wells. Comstock may also use a portion of the proceeds to lease land and fund additional drilling activity in 2022. Comstock’s Louisiana rivals Southwestern Energy and Chesapeake Energy recently bought Indigo Natural Resources and Vine Energy, respectively, as they look to scale up in the Haynesville basin, which is located close to the hubs that export liquefied natural gas. Northern, which invests in non-operated minority working and mineral interests in oil and gas properties, had acquired stakes earlier this year in Texas’ Permian basin for about $102 million and in Pennsylvania’s gas-heavy Marcellus basin for $126 million. Reporting by Arathy S Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D’Silva Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
مشاركة :