Maersk Oil Says it Has Several Billions to Spend on Acquisition Drive
By Karolin Schaps and Ron Bousso
LONDON, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Danish oil firm Maersk Oil has a number of billion {dollars} to purchase new licences, oil-producing fields and even launch a company takeover, the corporate’s Chief Operating Officer informed Reuters.
The oil producer, supported by the may of its delivery conglomerate mum or dad A.P. Moller-Maersk, is in an unusually robust place in contrast with friends making cutbacks within the face of a sustained hunch in oil costs.
SEE ALSO: Maersk Oil to Cut 12% of Global Workforce
Maersk Oil is eyeing offers in its home North Sea market and different areas, together with markets the place it has no presence but, COO Gretchen Watkins stated.
“We’re able to look at opportunities in the several billion dollar range,” she informed Reuters on the sidelines of an trade convention in London.
“There’s quite a few opportunities out there that we’re taking a hard look at.”
Watkins stated that the corporate might goal rival oil companies in addition to purchase in to present initiatives.
Maersk Oil introduced one such licensing deal final week, saying it had bought stakes in Kenyan and Ethiopian onshore blocks. These will take years to develop and nonetheless face logistical hurdles.
While oil corporations giant and small look to dump high-cost manufacturing belongings, the monetary muscle of Maersk Oil’s mum or dad will enable it to make the most of the trade’s worst downturn in many years by buying new exploration blocks, adopting the riskier technique in quest of longer-term progress.
Able to spend money on recent initiatives, such because the Culzean area within the British North Sea or the enormous Johan Sverdrup area in Norway, Maersk Oil will come “pretty close” to producing 400,000 barrels of oil per day in 2020, Watkins stated.
In Angola, one of many African nations Maersk Oil is already concerned in, the oil producer is locked in discussions with state-run Sonangol to renegotiate a production-sharing settlement on the offshore Chissonga area, Watkins stated.
“At the moment the project does not have positive economics,” she stated. (Editing by David Goodman)
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015.
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