About time too, from the AFR:
Woodside Petroleum will announce it has shelved its ambitions in relation to Oil Search as early as Tuesday.
Sources said Woodside chairman Michael Chaney had written to Oil Search’s board, formally notifying them that the company is no longer interested in progressing a merger.
…The PNG government is understood to have left Woodside in no doubt that only a price some way above the $8.20 a share that it bought in at would be acceptable, despite the slide in crude oil prices over the past 16 months.
As expected. The bid was always premature and politically fraught. Waste of time and money. Now, with Browse stuffed as well, it has no growth strategy. But that does not matter. It should just wait in the wings preserving its balance sheet so it can pick off whatever it likes as the mining GFC destroys all. The way I see things going it could probably buy Exxon in a year.
