Today marks the first day of trading for Spirit Energy, and there is a lot of excitement in our offices across Europe as we take the first step towards building a strong, sustainable exploration & production business ready for the future.
Teams across both Centrica’s Exploration & Production business and Bayerngas Norge have been working hard over the last few months to combine the two businesses and create a new operator focused on North-West Europe, and today that hard work is reflected in the launch of Spirit Energy.
We believe that this combination offers the best of both worlds. Centrica’s E&P business had mature assets providing strong production, and Bayerngas had interests in new and exciting fields either recently on stream or scheduled to start production in the coming years. And it’s not just our assets – as we worked towards completing this deal, it was clear that our people and our values were also a great fit.
Now that both businesses have been brought together, these teams and these portfolios set us up to be a strong and sustainable exploration and production business, built for the long-term and committed to North-West Europe.
We see opportunities right across the region to maximise our combined assets and build our portfolio further. In the UK North Sea, our teams in Aberdeen are overseeing new wells to extend the life of our existing fields like Chestnut, and collaborative efforts with fellow operators are opening up prospects previously thought uneconomic. In Norway, innovative thinking has allowed us to continue pushing ahead with the Oda development despite low commodity prices, and will continue to do so as we bring that field to first oil and work with our partners on fields newly on-stream like Ivar Aasen. It is a similar story in the southern sectors of the North Sea, whether we are extending the life of fields already producing gas in the Netherlands or joining new partners to invest in developments like Hejre and Solsort in Denmark.
With the combination of two businesses which have been cash-flow positive through some of the oil and gas industry’s most turbulent times, I have a lot of confidence in where we are heading. There are still 20billion barrels of oil and gas to go after in the UK alone, and new licensing rounds opening up fresh opportunities in Norwegian waters. If operators and the supply chain take the right steps then the region can have a bright future, and I look forward to us playing our part in making it a reality.
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