There’s a welcome whiff of oil industry consolidation in the air. But a gap between buyers and sellers shows there’s hardly a consensus that petroleum prices have hit bottom. Most of the recent action has been in Australia. Santos Ltd. SSLTY 2.92 % , one of Australia’s biggest energy companies, said Thursday that Scepter Partners, backed by Brunei’s oil-rich royalty, offered a 27% premium for the company over Wednesday’s price. This comes after Australian major Woodside Petroleum WOPEY -1.00 % bid for compatriot Oil Search, only to be rebuffed for being too cheap . Santos is also rebuffing Scepter, saying the bid is opportunistic. Scepter’s offer puts a debt-adjusted market value of $11.38 billion on Santos, or $9.14 per barrel of its proven and probable reserves. That is cheaper than Woodside’s offer for Oil Search at the time for $22.74 a barrel or Woodside’s own value of $17.38 a […]