Vermilion acquires Spartan Energy for $1.11bn

Vermilion Energy has completed its previously announced C$1.4bn ($1.11bn) acquisition of all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Canadian oil and natural gas exploration and production company Spartan Energy.

As part of the deal, Vermilion offered shares to Spartan and assumed around C$175m ($134.68m) in debt.

Under the terms of the acquisition, the company issued 0.1476 of a share for each Spartan common share.

Delisting of the Spartan common shares from the TSX is set to take place in the coming days, while the Vermilion shares received by the former holders of Spartan common shares according to the deal will be listed on the TSX and NYSE under the symbol ‘VET’.

At the time of signing the deal last month, Vermilion Energy CEO Anthony Marino was quoted by The Canadian Press as saying: “The Canadian sector continued to be more and more unloved over time, especially in the past year in the capital markets, and with our evaluation methodology and criteria we had, we found it came to represent better and better value.

“Spartan is probably the best example of this out there in that you have a company that is quite capable of rapid production growth.”

The acquisition consists of light oil producing assets covering around 480,000 net acres of land in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba.

Around 400,000 net acres of the land holding is located in south-east Saskatchewan.

The acquired assets are anticipated to produce 23,000boe/d this year.

Through the transaction, Vermilion has also gained control of the production infrastructure, as well as 2D and 3D seismic data.