Eleventh hour FCL Energy bid made $US100m sweeter

Greymouth Petroleum, the mystery group that has approached Fletcher Challenge about a possible last-minute sale of the Energy division, is understood to be acting for a buyer prepared to pay $US100 million more for Energy's North American assets than Apache Corporation.

Analysts said yesterday Sir Ron Brierley's Guinness Peat Group was involved in the proposed deal. GPG's New Zealand managing director, Tony Gibbs, declined to comment.

Greymouth is fronted by Mark Dunphy, a former Fay, Richwhite dealmaker and former Cultus Petroleum chief executive. Mr Dunphy could not be contacted.

Under the Energy deal Fletcher is putting to shareholders Apache has offered to pay $US600 million ($1.4 billion) for Energy's Canadian oil and gas exploration and production assets.

That compares with the $US530 million to $US586 million attributed to the assets in Grant Samuel's independent report on the sale proposal, dated January 23.

However North American gas prices have rocketed in recent months. One analyst said Apache would now be paying significantly less than the assets are worth.

The Greymouth proposal is unlikely to be welcome to the Fletcher Challenge board, which is in the final stages of clinching what will be one of New Zealand's most complicated corporate deals.

Shareholders vote on the Fletcher Group break-up package on March 6.

The timetable leaves little room for manoeuvre for Greymouth. With only seven working days until the meeting its only options, if the FCL board rejects its overtures, will be to walk, or to go public and try to get shareholders to vote the Energy transaction down at the March 6 meeting.

A spokesman for Royal Dutch/Shell, which will buy Energy's New Zealand and Brunei assets, confirmed this week that it had met Mr Dunphy at his request to talk about the Energy deal "but we don't know ourselves what he wants exactly."

Fletcher spokeswoman Ginny Radford said the group had not heard from Mr Dunphy "for a week or two."

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