Chesapeake Energy Corp. is selling a portion of its assets in north Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale to an undisclosed private company for roughly $450 million, the Oklahoma-based company announced this morning.
Chesapeake says the deal is for approximately 78,000 acres—40,000 acres of which it considers “core acreage”—and 250 wells that currently produce about 30 million cubic feet of gas every day. The transaction is expected to close in the first quarter of next year.
Chesapeake also says it’s marketing roughly 50,000 additional acres located in the northeastern part of its Haynesville Shale operating area, adding it also expects to close on that deal in the first quarter of 2017. Even when the sales are finalized, the Oklahoma City-based company will retain roughly 250,000 acres in the Haynesville Shale.
“With this proposed transaction and our previously announced Devonian asset divestiture, the company has reached approximately $2 billion gross proceeds from divestitures either signed or closed in 2016, excluding certain volumetric production payment repurchase transactions,” says Chesapeake CEO Doug Lawler in a prepared statement. “With our long-term target of $2 to $3 billion in debt reduction, we will continue to look for opportunities to accelerate value through the sale of additional non-core assets in 2017 and beyond.”
