Centrica plc today announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Direct Energy Marketing Limited, has made an agreed offer to acquire all outstanding common shares of Rockyview Energy Inc., (TSX:RVE), for a total cash consideration of C$113.3 million (£56.9 million) including debt.
The transaction is subject to shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close in January 2008.
Rockyview Energy is an oil and gas company with conventional oil and gas and coal-bed methane operations in central, western and north-western Alberta. In addition to a production base of 2,700 boe per day (of which 97% is natural gas), Rockyview Energy has a 100,000 acre undeveloped land portfolio with numerous identified drilling locations.
Sam Laidlaw, Chief Executive of Centrica, said: "Acquiring Rockyview Energy is in line with our strategy of increasing the level of vertical integration across Centrica and will add 43.2 Bcfe of additional gas reserves to supply our Canadian Direct Energy retail customers, with the potential to increase this substantially through future focused drilling in the surrounding land portfolio."