?The majors are coming back onshore North America. That’s according to presenters at several recent programs, including the A&D Strategies and Opportunities conference held in Dallas and presented by Oil and Gas Investor and A&D Watch.

Two major integrated players are already in the fray. The U.K.’s BP Plc planted its feet firmly in the Fayetteville and Woodford shales in two deals from Chesapeake for $3.7 billion. And Europe’s Royal Dutch Shell through subsidiaries made a big wave in British Columbia with a $6-billion purchase in the Montney shale and has accumulated 325,000 net acres in the Haynesville shale in a joint venture with EnCana Corp.

The global sandbox has gotten so small, with challenges in oil-rich regions such as Russia, South America and West Africa, that the majors have to come back onshore North America where it is politically secure.

“We’ve seen BP and Shell make a lot of acquisitions this year in the U.S. We’re going to see all of them. That’s a theme we’re going to see for the next couple of years,” says Scott Richardson, RBC Richardson Barr.

That these two majors are in the top five U.S. acquirers this year is momentous, says Bill Marko, managing director of Jefferies Randall & Dewey. These fall in behind XTO Energy, Plains Exploration & Production and Chesapeake Energy in a ranking that includes land acquisitions and lease sales.

“The majors are coming back to the states for lots of reasons,” he says, which encloses a circular asset food chain. “The majors used to set the food chain. When they were exiting they created the market and the supply of properties. Now they are buyers as they re-enter the U.S.”

The bait? Large reserves in North American shale plays. “All the majors are looking at the shales really hard.”

And should the majors decide to jump into shale plays feet first, existing companies with large positions that have executed their programs may be ripe targets. “That makes them potentially very attractive partners or attractive acquisitions if majors can value the upside enough to pay a premium to cause a deal to take place.”

“It’s going to encourage the smaller and capital-constrained companies to either sell out or be merged into someone else,” predicts Rob Bilger, managing director of Tristone Capital. “The larger companies in the plays already will be consolidators, but some of the majors may see this as the opportunistic way to re-enter North American gas plays in a big way.”

The Oil & Gas Asset Clearinghouse’s Ken Olive says it wouldn’t surprise him to see another round of corporate takeovers. “A number of large independent companies have set themselves up to be takeover candidates.”

Possibly by majors?

“It wouldn’t surprise me. They’ve recast themselves as resource-type players that would be attractive to the large-cap companies.”

Large-cap companies tend to follow similar strategies, he says. When BP moves into a play, “I guarantee that causes other large caps to start looking around and ask ‘Where could we acquire a large shale position and bring our technology to bear through an asset or a corporate deal?’ You’ll see some large caps taking a hard look at these shale plays to try to bring their balance sheet as well as their technology to bear.

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