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Comment by ranma4703 | Hacker News Reader

I'm real curious in the details behind their $1 purchase of this asset that turned out to be worth billions. Smells shady to me.

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Yeah this doesn't make sense to me either. If you assume the gas rights for all the land on the earth is priced that low (it isn't) you could buy all it for $1mm.

Also, I can't imagine the seller would be like "hmm, this guy wants to buy gas rights on 87,000 hectares of land for $1. Sounds like a good deal!" without thinking maybe there was something special and investigated for themselves first.

Land is cheap in that part of South Africa, but certainly not that cheap. For reference, [1] is 231ha of almost undeveloped land listed for about $100000.

I suspect it is tax evasion or a nepotism deal.

[1] https://www.property24.com/for-sale/bloemfontein-rural/bloem...

It's almost certainly nepotism.

Could also be some sort of tax or bankruptcy auction in exchange for them taking on some big liability?

They own the land but not actually the minerals or gas - they still have to get a permit from the government to to extract.

> They own the land but not actually the minerals or gas - they still have to get a permit from the government to to extract.

Other way around.

They bought gas rights - specifically they were interested in natural gas, but evidently the rights extend to any gas (I suppose there's an 'at room temperature' caveat in there, or this kind of right may set up some unexpected and highly unpleasant incentives).

It sounds like this was a highly speculative purchase, on land not considered hugely viable for extracting natural gas. There is, after all, the non-trivial problems & expenses around actually extracting, processing, shipping, and selling the gas(es).

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