Dick Stoneburner helped sell Petrohawk Energy Corp. to BHP Billiton Ltd. in a $15.1 billion deal. Now he’s bringing his experience in U.S. shale to Australia as a board member of Tamboran Resources Ltd.
“They have a lot of opportunity embedded in their assets, they just need some direction and need some capital,” Stoneburner, a managing director at New York-based investment firm Pine Brook Partners, said today in a phone interview.
Tamboran, based in Sydney, plans to go public in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2015, Joel Riddle, its CEO, said in a separate phone interview. The goal is to feed gas from shale fields to an LNG plant in Australia for export to Asia to meet rising demand.
Australia, which has the world’s seventh-largest shale gas resources, has the most attractive development prospects outside of North America, according to Houston-based Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.
Fred Barrett, the former CEO of Denver-based explorer Bill Barrett Corp., also joined as a Tamboran director last month, along with Stuart Lake of African Petroleum Corp., Riddle said. Tamboran plans to hire a CFO by the end of the year, he said.
Tamboran’s CEO is a former Exxon Mobil Corp. engineer who helped with Houston-based Cobalt International Energy Inc.’s 2009 initial public offering. Its deputy chairman is Richard Lane, a former executive at explorer Southwestern Energy Co.
Operational Experience
“We all bring geologic experience, understanding the rocks and how they compare to what we’ve developed in the U.S., and the operational experience we’ve had in terms of drilling,” Stoneburner said. “Those are things we’ve lived and breathed.”
Stoneburner was president of Petrohawk when it was sold for a 61% premium in 2011 to Melbourne-based BHP in the mining giant’s biggest acquisition. He began his career as a geologist in 1977, Pine Brook’s website shows.
The pace of shale development in countries such as Australia will “be nowhere near what it is in the U.S., but that’s OK,” said Stoneburner, who is also on the boards of Newfield Exploration Co., Yuma Energy Inc. and Cub Energy Inc.
Tamboran is looking at a reverse merger in the U.S., a deal that involves a private firm buying a public company to gain a listing, and seeking to have its shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, according to Riddle.
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