Publisher of the latest words of wisdom about “different circumstances” is UBS, a set of initials taken from its founder, the Union Bank of Switzerland. Target of the alleged change is none other than Woodside Petroleum with the big tip from UBS being that Royal Dutch/Shell is about to launch a fresh takeover bid, and this time it could get Australian Government approval.
No date was attached to the advisory note picked up by assorted media outlets, including Energy Review, but the Slug reckons that it might have been April 1 – not that those Swiss chaps are noted for good old-fashioned leg pull.
But, if it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke, and it was UBS being serious, what on earth possessed the poor darlings – and what on earth has change so much that the Australian Government is about to ignite a politically destructive debate for no particular reason.
In favour of the “changed circumstances” argument is the allowance of Xstrata’s bid for WMC (failed), and the re-election of the Howard Government late last year.
But that’s about that.
To argue that the LNG industry looks any different now than it did three years ago is, in another famous one-word observation, wrong.
The Gorgon project is said to be closer, oh yeah! There’s been an ownership shuffle (if you listen closely you can still hear the deck chairs being rearranged), but no-one has found a dinkum solution to the deep, dirty, dry and distant problem.
Sunrise continues to do a damned fine imitation of Sunset, and Scarborough has one true believer in BHP Billiton and one non-believer in a small oil company called ExxonMobil, which has probably forgotten more about the oil game than BHP Billiton knows, or is likely to learn in the next 50 years.
No, dear reader, trust Uncle Slugcatcher, this is a furphy – and for Swiss readers out there a furphy is pretty much what it sounds like, a tall story, and a wonderful word created by a dinkum Aussie write of an earlier generation, Albert Facey.
The only real question is what possessed UBS to float such a theory. Was it after a long lunch, a late night, a hole in the weekly notes to clients that needed to be filled with something juicy (an event known to happen in the publishing game – as hard as that is to believe), or does UBS actually believe there has been a change of heart in Canberra.
Shell people, led by Tim Warren, decline to comment on speculation, but come pretty close when adding to a no comment that “one thing I would say is that the recent visit of Shell executives to Canberra was to brief the government before the announcement was made on changes to the Gorgon gas project.”
Well, if that was a factor in UBS saying a fresh approach has been made over Woodside then the Slug reckons someone at the broking firm has got it horribly, horribly wrong.
Why? Simply because the only changed circumstance in the LNG industry is that Shell has increased its grip, rising from 14% of Gorgon to 25%. In other words, the only change is Shell increasing its grip, the very reason any Woodside bid was rejected in the first place.
No, dear reader, if the Slug was tipping a change the ownership structure of Woodside it would be Shell selling down, rather than going up – now that would be a much more interesting development.
