Page 10 - Euroil Week 05 2020

EurOil INVESTMENT EurOil
Chrysaor talks to buy Siccar Point break down
Siccar Point Energy’s operations. Source: company website.
UK
UK-BASED Chrysaor has ended talks to buy fellow North Sea private equity-backed player Siccar Point, sources told Reuters on January 31, because of a large gap in their price expectations.
Siccar Point’s owners Blackstone and Blue Water Energy closed the bidding process for the company last month, according to Bloomb- erg, collecting o ers from Chrysaor, Norway’s Equinor, Canada’s Suncor Energy, China’s CNOOC and another rm backed by private equity rm HitecVision.
EIG-backed Chrysaor was the only company to o er to buy Siccar Point as a whole, Reuters claimed, ling a bid worth $1.6bn. But Siccar Point’s owners are seeking around $3bn, accord- ing to the news agency.
It is unclear whether Blackstone and Blue- water will accept any of the o ers for only parts of Siccar Point’s operations, which comprise six projects in the UK North Sea and West of Shetlands.
Siccar Point’s current output is around 10,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd), but this is expected to ramp up to as high as 80,000 boepd by the end of the decade. e company boasts around 600mn boe in resources and reserves.
Blackstone and Blue Water set the company up in 2014 and built the business up through a series of major takeover deals, including the $870mn acquisition of OMV’s North Sea
portfolio in 2017. ey have not disclosed how much they have since invested in the assets.
Chrysaor, meanwhile, emerged as the North Sea’s top producer a er snapping up the assets of Royal Dutch Shell in 2017 and ConocoPhillips last year.
The North Sea merger and acquisition (M&A) market remains very active, with an esti- mated $12bn of assets being sold in 2019 alone, up from just $4.5bn a year earlier. Chrysaor’s purchase of ConocoPhillips’ UK operations was worth $2.7bn, while other major deals during the year included Ithaca Energy’s $2bn takeover of Chevron’s UK business and Eni a liate Var Energi’s acquisition of ExxonMobil’s Norwegian operations.
The trend of supermajors cutting back in the mature region has continued into this year, with mid-sized UK producer Premier Oil agree- ing last month to acquire a set of BP elds for $625mn.
A key company to watch is ExxonMobil, which having exited Norway, is now seeking a buyer for its UK elds as well. e US major announced plans last year to shed some $25bn of assets in Asia, Africa and Europe by 2025, to focus on select, large-scale projects in Mozam- bique, Papua New Guinea, Guyana, Brazil and the US. It has con rmed it wants to withdraw from Europe’s upstream sector altogether. ™
P10
w w w. N E W S B A S E . c o m Week 05 06•February•2020