There’s a new player in the Oklahoma SCOOP.
Oklahoma City-based Gulfport Energy Corporation announced Wednesday that it will acquire nearly 46,400 net surface acres in the core of the Oklahoma SCOOP play from Quantum Energy Partners for a total purchase price of $1.85 billion. The agreement with Vitruvian II Woodford, LLC, a portfolio company of Quantum Energy, consists of $1.35 billion in cash and 18.8 million in shares of Gulfport common stock, according to a company press release.
“Today is a defining day for Gulfport Energy,” said Michael G. Moore, Gulfport’s Chief Executive Officer and President. “Combining Vitruvian’s high-quality SCOOP position with our prolific Utica assets will transform our company and solidify Gulfport with core positions in two of North America’s high-return natural gas basins. In Vitruvian, we believe we have found a prolific stacked pay resource with strong production history, a multi-year, high-return drilling inventory – an opportunity with significant upside from both a resource and operational perspective. The asset consists of a low-risk, substantially contiguous acreage position in the core of the SCOOP. This acquisition is not only additive to our Company but in our opinion truly one-of-a-kind. The transaction is expected to be accretive to cash flow and net asset value per share and provides us with a blocky, sizeable and scalable footprint in a new operating area.”
The substantially contiguous acreage covers approximately 85,000 net acres in multiple producing zones, including the Woodford and Springer formations in Grady, Stephens and Garvin counties.
The transaction also includes 48 producing horizontal wells and an additional interest in over 150 non-operated horizontal wells. Four rigs are currently operating on the acreage. Gulfport intends to maintain a four rig cadence in the play during 2017 while adding two more rigs at the beginning of 2018.
The SCOOP acreage deal is expected to close in February 2017.
To help fund the transaction, Gulfport also launched a public offering of 29 million shares of its common stock, with an underwriters’ option to purchase up to another 4.35 million common shares and a debt offering of $600 million aggregate principal amount of senior notes due 2025.