Woodside, Shell, BHP Could Form Australia’s First Great Oil Major

Hold everything. The Shanghai Stock exchange has halted the trading of Baosteel share’s for Tuesday.

You remember Baosteel. It’s the Chinese steel-maker that says it’s NOT working with Blackstone (NYSE:BX) to make an offer for Rio Tinto (ASX:RIO) that trumps BHP’s (ASX:BHP) offer.

Say one thing. Do another. Why would you tip your hand in markets when you don’t have to? The rumours were flying yesterday. One was that Blackstone will raise debt to buy just Rio’s iron ore business. Another, that BHP will sell off its oil business and that the petroleum arm will merge with Woodside (ASX:WPL) and Shell (NYSE:RDS.A) to become Australia’s first great oil major.

Good lord it’s going to be a busy week. But this is the real side of the boom. Ownership of Australia mineral and energy assets is at stake. The bidders are private equity, sovereign wealth funds, and other public companies. How high will the price go?

More on this subject tomorrow. We again have to keep today’s reckoning short as we have one final day of meetings with our visitors from America. They spent the day yesterday reviewing our business in Australia. And we spent the night having dinner at the Doomer’s Ball with readers from every state in Australia, except Tasmania!

Come on Tasmania! Stand up for yourself.

We’d like to tell you what we told all of our guests last night: thank you. We’ve finished our second year in Australia. And despite our best attempts to depress you with stories about the coming collapse of paper currency, the gravity of a world where energy and money are both getting more expensive, and the genetic propensity for human beings to do exactly the wrong thing at the worst moment, you keep coming back from more. We’re glad to have you and thank you for being such patient, loyal readers.

Also, we realised just how talented and experienced our readers are. This has given us an idea to put all that talent to use. Watch this space.

Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia

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