BP Christmas shopping

BP has announced a series of high profile acquisitions in the past few weeks. The deals are in line with BP's longer term strategy of building in regions where they can gain "scale and materiality", although the company has moved more quickly than expected based on OGInsight's recent conversation with them, where BP said they were in divestment and portfolio rationalisation mode. This potentially signals a view of an improving oil price environment...

Read More

Eni: Bringing in successive partners for Zohr

On 28th November, Eni announced the divestment a 10% interest in Zohr to BP for USD375 million plus pro-rata reimbursement of past costs (c.USD150 million net), bringing total consideration to USD525 million. BP also has an option to acquire an additional 5% interest on the same terms before the end of 2017. On 12th December, Eni announced that it had divested a further 30% interest in Zohr to Rosneft for USD1.125 billion and USD450 million...

Read More

TransGlobe: Branching out...back to roots

This week saw Canadian listed, Egyptian focussed TransGlobe ‎announce an acquisition of producing assets in Western Canada. The company will be paying USD80 million to Bellatrix Exploration for Cardium light oil and Mannville liquid-rich gas acreage in the Harmattan Area. The portfolio comes with 21mmboe of 2P reserves and 3,100boepd of production. The acquisition is a shift away from the company's ‎historic strategy of being an Egyptian focussed player. However this had been pre-announced with TransGlobe stating earlier this year that it was...

Read More

International Petroleum Investment Company: A fresh start

IPIC has been on a journey to rebuild its business following the extraordinary downfall of Khadem al-Qubaisi, the company’s managing director who was made to step down in April 2015. In the months that followed, there was a major shakeup across all levels of the organisation including in the portfolio companies, with many of the roles previously held by al-Qubaisi reassigned to new officers. At the time, IPIC did not release any statements around...

Read More

Oda to Joy!

On 30th November, Centrica announced that it had submitted the Plan for Development and Operation (PDO) for the Oda field to the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy. Oda, previously called Butch, is owned by the following partners: Centrica (40% operator) Suncor (30%) Aker BP (15%) Faroe (15%) Oda is an oil field, discovered in 2011 and lies in the Norwegian North Sea. The field will be developed as a subsea tie-back to the Ula patform,...

Read More

Siccar Point is building up its business

OGInsights recently caught up with the Siccar Point team following its successful acquisition of the OMV North Sea business, which includes an 11.8% stake in the flagship Schiehallion oil field. Together with the acquisition of a stake in the Mariner field earlier this year, Siccar Point has now built up a North Sea business of relevant scale. Siccar Point is a North Sea focussed E&P, with financial backing from Blackstone, Blue Water Energy...

Read More

Not so Stella

Following Ithaca’s recent update on Stella, it has now announced that there will be a short delay to first production with the operation coming on stream in January. The offshore commissioning of the FPF-1 platform is well advanced and continues. However during routine inspections, faults were found on a number of electrical junction boxes on the vessels processing facilities. Repairs are now underway but this will delay field start up. The repair costs are expected to be immaterial....

Read More