Woodside

Oil Search, one of Papua New Guinea’s leading businesses, waved off the bid by Australia’s biggest oil and gas producer to merge in late 2015.

The Papua New Guinea Government has a 10 percent stake in OSL.   

Woodside Petroleum on December 8 advised the Australian Stock Exchange that it was withdrawing its proposal to merge with Oil Search.

In response, OSL’s managing director Peter Botten said “as previously advised, the indicative Woodside proposal grossly undervalued the company’’.

OSL have 17 per cent stake the in PNG's LNG gas project.

Woodside confirmed in a statement to the ASX it would offer one of its shares for every four shares in the Papua New Guinea-focused Oil Search.

Before the offer Oil Search had a market capitalisation of $10.24 billion, while Woodside was valued at $25.2 billion.

The offer represented an approximately 13 per cent premium on Oil Search's pre-bid price.

Oil Search shares surged more than 14 per cent on the news to $7.70, while Woodside had fallen back by 2.8 per cent to $29.74 at 12pm (AEST).