Independent oil and gas producer Eclipse Resources is looking at a sale of the company, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.

The State College, Pennsylvania-based company has been working with Morgan Stanley soliciting offers from competitors, Kallanish Energy understands.

The company has been reaching out informally to potential suitors, but isn’t conducting a formal auction, the sources told Bloomberg. Eclipse has a market value of roughly $500 million.

Representatives for Eclipse and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Small, independent, cash-gobbling U.S. oil and gas producers, coping with depressed commodity prices, have been increasingly putting themselves on the block. Clayton Williams Energy said in October it is reviewing options and hired Goldman Sachs Group to explore a sale, while Rosetta Resources in July sold itself to Noble Energy for more than $3 billion.

Eclipse, founded in 2011 with backing from private equity firm EnCap Investments, was one of numerous producers that raised debt and equity after energy prices collapsed last year, selling roughly $440 million of shares in a private placement in December.

The company holds roughly 225,000 acres in the Utica and Marcellus Shale plays in eastern Ohio, according to its website. Its net loss dropped in the second quarter to roughly $42 million, from almost $113 million a year ago.

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Joseph Barone
www.ShaleDirectories.com