Page 20 - EurOil Week 40

EurOil PROJECTS & COMPANIES EurOil

IOG drops bid for fellow UK junior Deltic

UK LONDON-LISTED Independent Oil and Gas Deltic responded by saying that IOG’s second
(IOG) has dropped plans to acquire fellow south- bid still represented a 10% discount on the firm’s
IOC said Deltic’s board ern North Sea-focused explorer Deltic Energy, it shares at the end of trading on September 24, and
had not “engaged” said on October 5. was “not in the best interests of shareholders.”
when it made its first IOG said Deltic’s board had not “engaged” IOG undervalued Deltic and its portfolio and
bid and had rejected its when it made an initial approach in August, and key shareholders supported the board in reject-
second. then its second approach, offering improved ing the offer, Deltic said. Deltic’s assets include
terms, was rejected last week, it said. the Pensacola and Selene gas prospects, where it
“A transaction would have considerable is partnered with Royal Dutch Shell. The pair aim
industrial logic, consolidating and scaling up to drill their first exploration well at Pensacola in
two complementary portfolios with a balance of the second half of 2021.
near-term catalysts and longer-term upside, rep- Deltic also saw off a hostile takeover bid
resenting excellent value for both sets of share- earlier this year from Reabold Resources, con-
holders,” IOG said. vincing shareholders that the offer undervalued
But the company will not raise its bid a sec- the company. It also raised concerns about the
ond time, “not least given the quality of its own upsides of Reabold’s own projects, including the
existing portfolio and near-term development West Newton oil and gas discovery in northern
opportunities.” England.
IOG’s main focus is the Core Project, where it IOG was itself a takeover target last year.
plans to develop a cluster of fields in the southern RockRose tried to buy the company’s debts, but
North Sea to recover 11.6bn cubic metres of gas. gave up after failing to get the support of lenders.
The project’s first phase is due to start production RockRose was then acquired by energy trading
in July 2021. group Viaro in July. ™

Lithuanian refiners buys

first Brent cargo

LITHUANIA ORLEN Lietuva (Orlen Lithuania), a Lithua- September 3.
nian oil refinery owned by Poland’s largest oil Poland’s PKN Orlen acquired Mazeikiu Nafta
Urals is more expensive group Orlen, has reportedly purchased a small (now Orlen Lietuva) in 2006 and says it has
because of OPEC+ batch of North Sea Brent crude for the first time. invested almost $4bn in the company since then.
cuts. A shipment of 40,000 tonnes of Brent arrived at Poland’s state-controlled refiner PKN Orlen
the port of Butinge for the Mazeikiai refinery on posted a net profit of PLN3.99bn (€904.6mn) in
September 1, data from the Refinitiv Eikon sys- Q2, the company said on July 30. The result is a
tem showed. PKN Orlen bought the batch from jump of 148.9% year on year as well as a changeo-
the Klesch Group, traders say. ver from a net loss of PLN2.25bn reported in Q1,
The Mazeikiai refinery has historically pro- the figures show.™
cessed marine Urals shipments. But this year
the Russian blend has risen sharply in price, as a
result of OPEC+ cuts to supply. At the same time,
some other grades on the European market have
become more readily available. This has allowed
PKN Orlen to expand the basket of grades for
processing at the refineries.
OPEC+ output quotas have been in force
since May. Russian oil production was capped at
8.49mn barrels per day in May-July and is lim-
ited to 8.99mn bpd from August 1 until the end
of the year. The cuts will then be eased again, but
will not be ended entirely until early 2022.
Orlen Lietuva (Orlen Lithuania) is con-
sidering an investment into a refinery residue
upgrading facility in Lithuania, a representative
of the Lithuanian economy ministry said on

P20 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 40 08•October•2020