Page 8 - Euroil Week 31 2019
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EurOil INVESTMENT EurOil
Richard Tasker, country manager of Exxon- Mobil operations in Romania, met with prime minister Viorica Dancila in the days before the exit plans surfaced.
ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom should have decided on whether to move ahead with the commercial exploitation of the Neptun project by the end of 2018 but delayed their decision
due to changes to the o shore law and new taxes the government levied on the energy industry.
In addition, ExxonMobil recently discov- ered huge hydrocarbon reserves in other areas, including Cyprus, where the gas reserves of the Glaucus-1 well are three times larger than those in the Romanian Black Sea.
Norway’s Noreco seals takeover of Shell’s Danish assets
DENMARK
Shell is retaining its downstream assets in Denmark.
NORTH Sea-focused Noreco has sealed a $1.9bn deal to buy the Danish upstream assets of Royal Dutch Shell, positioning it as the country’s second biggest oil and gas producer.
rough the transaction, rst unveiled last October and announced as closed by Noreco on July 31, the Norwegian company has acquired Shell’s 36.8% stake in the Danish Underground Consortium (DUC) led by France’s Total.
DUC controls 15 o shore elds including Halfdan, Gorm, Dan and Tyr, as well as connect- ing infrastructure. It accounts for around 90% of Denmark’s oil and gas output.
“With the successful completion of this transformational acquisition, we will now work closely with the operator to maximise recovery of proven reserves and resources,” Noreco chair- man Riulf Rustad said in a statement. “We will seek to continue value creation also by exploring new opportunities in the DUC concession and elsewhere.”
e deal also raises Noreco’s share of Den- mark’s Lulita eld from 10% to 28.4%. Overall, the acquisition will add 195mn barrels of oil equivalent (boe) to the company’s proven and probable reserves, 66% of which are liquids.
Shell’s share of production at DUC averaged 57,000 boe per day last year, down from 67,000 boepd in 2017.
e sale secured approval from the Danish authorities in April, and closure had been antic- ipated the following month. But completion was held up by “an outstanding issue between the seller and the operator of DUC,” Noreco said in June. e transaction has been backdated to January 1, 2017.
Shell and other oil and gas majors are scaling back in the North Sea to focus on larger-scale projects in the Americas and other regions that o er better returns.
In a separate message, the Anglo-Dutch rm said it was retaining its downstream presence in Denmark, which consists of the 70,000 barrel per day (bpd) Fredericia oil re nery and a chain of lling stations. e company had been consid- ering the sale of the Fredericia plant as well, but cancelled divestment plans in early 2018.
From struggling on the brink of bankruptcy several years ago, Noreco has reversed its for- tunes and is now on an expansion drive. e company also has assets o the coast of the UK and Norway.
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w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 31 08•August•2019
