Selling out or selling up? The battle for Santos takes a twist

Australia Broadcast Center

9 hours ago

The gloves are off.
The battle for control of oil and gas giant Santos moved up a gear this week after Ryan Stokes, chairman of Beach Energy and son of billionaire Kerry, took a swipe at the Abu Dhabi government's tilt for a large slice of Australia's energy market.
A clearly incensed Stokes delivered a blunt assessment of the Middle Eastern gas giant's $36 billion takeover, suggesting it could end up denying Australians access to their own energy source.
"A question we'd have is: 'Is that right in the national interest, given the importance of domestic gas?'" he asked.
He didn't have to wait long for a response.
The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) quickly slapped him down, dismissing the criticisms as "clearly opportunistic and [reflecting] a commercial interest in the outcome".
With $36 billion on the table — the biggest all-cash takeover offer in Australian history — ADNOC too has a significant commercial interest in the outcome.
There's been surprisingly little, if any, debate around the merits of the takeover or the identity of the purchaser.
Had the Australian government announced plans to purchase Santos, there undoubtedly would have been furious debate over the nationalisation of a vitally important commercial operation.
Instead, a foreign government with potentially shifting global allegiances and a track record of dubious activities across Africa and Asia has stumped up a stupendous amount of cash for the same crucial energy infrastructure with nary a hint of community or political questioning.
He's best known in the west as the money man behind the fabulously successful Manchester City Football Club.
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan, the younger brother of the United Arab Emirates's all powerful ruler, is one of the richest men in the Middle East and the UAE's deputy prime minister and vice president.
Rarely seen in public, he never attends Manchester City games and has managed to maintain a low profile despite controlling key institutions like the Emirati central bank, the Abu Dhabi criminal authority and the nation's rapidly growing $330 billion sovereign wealth fund.
He also chairs the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the entity leading the Santos takeover.
But his influence extends well beyond the UAE's borders.
An in-depth investigation by the New York Times, published just last month, outlines a web of shadowy connections, linking Sheikh Mansour to several long-running conflicts in Africa.
Until recently, he's somehow escaped scrutiny.
But last year the British government intervened to prevent the sheikh buying The Telegraph over concerns it could diminish press freedom.
His name was also raised in trials in the United States and Malaysia amid accusations Sheikh Mansour profited from 1MDB scandal, one of the world's biggest financial frauds.
More recently, Manchester City has been accused of breaching funding rules on 130 occasions to purchase star players that have transformed the club from mediocre also-rans to top of the Premier League, accusations denied by the club.
But it is the revelations of Sheikh Mansour's associations with regional warlords, outlined in the New York Times, that are concerning.
For years, he has been aligned with Lt General Mohamed Hamdan, the powerful Sudanese commander who seized power in a coup and who, two years before the latest conflict erupted in the war-torn North African enclave, he had hosted at an Emirati arms fair.
Just weeks before the conflict erupted into outright civil war in 2023, the NYT reported Hamdan was a guest at Sheikh Mansour's Persian Gulf palace.
US Democrats have called for a ban on weapons exports to the Emirates. The UAE, meanwhile, has vehemently denied any involvement in arming Hamdan's forces, which have been accused of massacres, mass rape and genocide in the ongoing war.
It is a conflict that has resulted in the death of 150,000 and displaced more than 12 million people, making it the world's biggest humanitarian crisis.
For a country swimming in surplus energy, it seems almost inconceivable that Australia's most populated areas have faced gas shortages and soaring electricity prices for much of the past decade.
The blame can be sheeted home to a series of bungled decisions that allowed gas to be exported from the east coast by three giant consortia without ensuring adequate domestic supplies.
Domestic gas prices, which previously had traded around $3 a gigajoule, trebled and then quadrupled to match global prices and beyond.
Much of the blame could be sheeted home to Santos. At the last minute, it doubled the size of its liquifying export plant on Curtis Island just off the Queensland coast near Gladstone without fully shoring up its gas reserves.
Finding itself short of feed to meet its export contracts, it then proceeded to drain the domestic market.
The ongoing shortfalls drove energy intensive manufacturers to the wall and were a major contributing factor to the inflation outbreak for the past three years that only now is under control.
It is into this charged environment that ADNOC has parachuted.
Santos, for decades a chronic investment underperformer, has been offered a price that far exceeds the company's value.
According to one financier who requested anonymity, the UAE based group has suddenly decided it needs to be a global entity and is executing that strategy regardless of price.
"There are only a handful of assets globally that are available if you wanted to scale up. There's a few in America and then there is Woodside and Santos.
"So ADNOC is willing to deal on non-commercial terms."
But there are concerns about the Middle Eastern energy giant's ambitions. Some believe that, despite its statements and assurances, it isn't the slightest bit interested in Australia's domestic gas market,
Instead, the thinking is that the firm has its sights set on the Barossa gas field in the waters north of Darwin along with Santos's Papua New Guinea operations and its prospective play in Alaska.
Ryan Stokes and his father Kerry have a direct interest in the outcome of this mega-deal.
Their Beach Energy has a joint venture with Santos in one of the world's largest carbon capture and storage projects, in the Cooper Basin, a major gas field smack in the middle of Australia, that has supplied the east coast for decades.
While Stokes has since gone to ground, insiders believe the pair were miffed at not being informed of the deal, given their commercial link, and may now be looking to expand Beach's domestic gas operations by purchasing Santos assets.
ADNOC isn't alone on the transaction. There's another Abu Dhabi government entity along with US private equity group Carlyle.
Exactly what role Carlyle will play has yet to be spelt out. It may be in the consortium to pick up the Australian domestic gas interests if the deal goes ahead. Or it could there to play a role in smoothing the way in the US, given the Alaska gas fields.
First, however, the deal needs Jim Chalmers' tick of approval. ADNOC is still going over the Santos books and has yet to confirm a formal takeover offer. So the Foreign Investment Review Board has yet to receive an application.
But ADNOC may face a tougher time than it anticipated.
Foreign ownership has become a politically charged issue, highlighted by the federal government's determination to return the Port of Darwin to local ownership from Chinese control.
Energy, and particularly gas, is in another realm altogether, given it is supposed to be the transition fuel to a renewables future.
Then there's the history. Three prime ministers, Turnbull, Morrison and Albanese, were forced to personally intervene in the market.
Such is the distrust of the gas exporters, the competition regulator has been charged with the task of keeping the east coast market under permanent review.
Its most recent report forecasts ongoing and growing domestic shortages out to 2036.
Not surprisingly, investors aren't all that confident the deal will proceed.
The Santos share price hasn't risen above $8 since the bid was announced. That's an 11 per cent discount to the $8.89 offer.