[Editor's note: A version of this story appears in the December 2020 issue of Oil and Gas Investor magazine. Subscribe to the magazine here.]

In September, a little-known company began buying up leasehold in Montana and North Dakota. The purchases were mysterious for both sensible and confounding reasons.

First, the lease sale held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for federal leases during an election year. With the outcome of the election months in the future—as it now remains weeks after Election Day— federal leasing for oil and gas drilling was a hot button issue.

With the ability to drill on federal lands symbolically on the ballot, it seemed a riskier than usual bet in a worse than usual downturn.

But far more baffling was that Levi Sap Nei Thang and her eponymous company were purchasing the leases despite her lack of oil and gas drilling background. Rather, she’s a perfume entrepreneur born in Myanmar and married to a megachurch pastor. During the summer, she began acquiring the rights to leases in Wyoming and New Mexico.

Even for 2020, this seemed to be bordering on self-parody. In fact, if the year could be summarized in, say, an eau de parfum, it might be called “Quirky and Fatal by 2020 A.D.”

There is plenty of evidence that Levi Sap Nei Thang herself is doing pretty much what other buyers have set out to do: buy at market lows.

Experienced private-equity companies have already launched plans for this year and 2021 to use unspent funds on bargain-priced acreage. The fact that the latest buyer has evenings out with the British ambassador, according to her Pinterest account, is just a little extra flair.

Along with having few competitors, the price of shale acreage has dwindled. Average prices have fallen by about 70% in the past two years, according to Rystad Energy. In 2020, average acreage prices were about $5,000 compared to $17,000 in 2018.

Thang began buying leases in June, including a federal geothermal lease in Washington.

Reuters recently reported that Thang had spent more than $1 million bidding on federal drilling leases in 11 states in August and September, according to BLM sale documents. The more than 100 leases cover nearly 87,000 acres, or 47% of the acreage offered at BLM auctions over five weeks in August and September, according to the documents.

A closer look shows that in September, Thang’s company purchased about 14,000 net acres in North Dakota and Montana for about $369,000, according to BLM data. On average, she paid $26.31 per acre.

For perspective, she bought acreage for less than a bottle of her perfume, Memory, sells ($29 per bottle and, as of this writing, on sale). It’s a little chilling to think what she might purchase if she decided to throw around Testimony perfume style money on acreage, which lists at $49 for a 3.4 fluid ounce bottle.

Thang also sells sunglasses and handbags, many of which are worth as much as three barrels of WTI.

It turns out the joke is on the oil business right now. Given how investors feel about the oil business, her reasoning may be as good as anyone’s.

“Nobody is buying now so there is no competition,” Thang said in an interview with Reuters while driving in Utah on a Western tour focused on oil and gas development and other property ventures. “I don’t go by what [other] people are doing.”

But faster than you can shout “toilet water,” The Salt Lake Tribune noted in an article about Thang that BLM requires federal leaseholders be U.S. citizens. Thang told the newspaper that she is not a citizen, but a “legal permanent resident.” Her personal website describes her with similar phrasing.

Even if BLM allows the rights to be transferred to Thang, the rigorous enforcers at the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., known as CFIUS, are unlikely to go along without far more scrutiny. CFIUS has broad authority to reject real estate transactions in the U.S. that involve foreign people that may pose a risk to national security.

Thang describes herself as a “dreamer” on her personal website and an artist, poet, author and Christian. “One of her hobbies is singing and composed [sic] songs, making music in various languages as her time permits,” the website says.

Another pastime, apparently, is now oil and gas, with just a soupçon of peculiar hanging in the air.

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