BHP mulls Fayetteville divestment

BHP Billiton said on Wednesday it was considering the sale of its Fayetteville shale gas acreage in Arkansas, which it valued at USD 919 million at the end of 2016.

The news came as the company continues on a divestment drive from non-core interests, including onshore acreage in the US, in addition to raising spending on the Trion field and the Mad Dog 2 project in the Gulf of Mexico.

In January, BHP said it had earmarked some USD 820 million for exploration in Trion this year. The following month, it approved an investment of some USD 2.2 billion in Mad Dog 2.

“The demerger of South32 and USD 7 billion of divestments has reduced the number of assets in the portfolio by over a third and our new organisational structure has removed layers of management,” CEO Andrew Mackenzie said in a statement, looking back at the past 9 months.

“Our more focused portfolio has enabled us to lower unit costs by over 40 percent.”

In February, the company posted a strong performance for the six months ending December 31, 2016, with an attributable profit of USD 3.2 billion.

Aside from Fayetteville, for which the company is considering “all options,” some 202 square kilometres in the Eagle Ford shale play’s southern Hawkville area are also on sale, “with the sales process well advanced,” the company added in an operations review.

BHP lost USD 2.8 billion on Fayetteville in 2012, which it acquired a year earlier, Reuters reported. It subsequently tried unsuccessfully to sell the asset.