DeepDown,
You bring up a good point. I went and looked into this, this afternoon. It seems that Arrow was bought from Nicholas Davis and the others by CNPC/Shell. Yea for them, but what did they get out of it? It appears that they were able to create ACER and DART from the remnants and profit heavily personally, but it didn't stop there.
With ACER it seems that was done with Republic, another Chinese investment group and the first group to be associated with the 249B. That was probably too obvious so they pulled. But they are all still closely related and heavily Chinese money. It seems they initially got money for Arrow, then they got support for ACER and they got loans for DART.
In exchange Arrow seems to have been able to buy things and add things to the portfolio that CNPC couldn't get on it's own.
So lets look at this one. Davis and crew have already said they would focus onshore. Perhaps they need a partner for the offshore, like CNOC to provide the dollars to develop the offshore. Would those assets be sold to a JV? If they do that, I'm out because that would be the majority of the upside going to the Chinese.
If the end game is to bring in more Chinese money/government they are going to have to deal with the US very closely. That didn't work out too well for UNOCAL that ended up being sold to Chevron because the deal cratered thanks to CFIUS.
It looks like these Singaporeans simply need to get rid of the board in order to make the strategy work. Of course they will pump up the price to get a little extra on the side and then execute.
However, if the US government decides this is a no go, then shareholders lose big time and I would bet these guys are out even before the game begins.
The Chinese are patient but they are not stupid. A foothold in Alaska could lead to a seat at the table for Arctic trade routes and that may ultimately be the motivator to go after a small company like Buccaneer. It would certainly be more palatable coming from an Australian company than from the Chinese directly.
