esteon, page-15

Maybe me.

Just a last post following MRO's conference call on its Q1 2014 results.

Link to the SeekingAlpha transcript of the MRO Q&A session on the Q1 2014 results:

hTTp://seekingalpha.com/article/2200963-marathon-oils-mro-ceo-lee-tillman-on-q1-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=2&p=qanda&l=last

Extract:

Lee Tillman response to Ed Westlake - Credit Suisse: "...the North Sea businesses contribute about 20% of projected 2014 cash flow...both the Eagle Ford as well as the Bakken will be going cash flow positive at current activity levels in 2015"

Q Doug Leggate (Bank of America): "But how are you thinking about redeploying the potential proceeds of the Norwegian and U.K. [assets]"

A Lee Tillman: "...we've got a deep inventory of growth opportunities across our three high quality U.S. resource play. Certainly one of the first calls on those proceeds would be looking to drive further accretive investments and across those three plays....we will look at selective resource capture opportunities as long as those opportunities can compete with the current inventory that we have in hand which is quite high quality"
===========================================================

So, the assets being sold contribute 20% to cash flow currently and the EFS will be cash flow positive next year. MRO has also stated that it is likely to invest some of the proceeds of sale of the North Sea assets in the EFS, which is one of its 3 US resource plays.

A counter-bid for AUT at a premium of 10% to Baytex's offer would represent a price of about USD 121k / net acre. That is for acreage that is fully held by production and fully serviced by infrastructure. Unless MRO can pick up acreage having comparable potential at a less-advanced stage of development for a significantly lower price, a counter-bid and a mopping up of the EME & AWE minorities at comparable prices would seem to be in line with the strategy for reinvestment of the asset sale proceeds.

However, unless anything pops up over the next week or so, they will be running out of time.