Oilexco North Sea (ONS), which went into administration last month, had secured and unsecured debts totalling more than £600million, the Press and Journal can reveal today.
A document circulated to creditors shows the extent of the company’s debts.
Debts secured by floating charges came to just under £479million, with the Royal Bank of Scotland due the most – more than £168million. National Australia Bank was due just over £49million, while Barclays and Bank of Scotland were both owed £34million.
There were dozens of unsecured non-preferential creditors, on a list over five pages that totalled £130.6million and included many top names in the oil and gas industry.
Transocean Offshore was due more than £15million, while other creditors included Framo Engineering (£11.2million), Diamond Offshore Drilling (£7.2million) and Schlumberger Offshore (nearly £4.9million).
Among other ONS creditors were Aker Kvaerner Offshore £3.1million, BlueWater Energy (£2.2million), Technip Offshore (£2.1million), Island Offshore Management (£1.3million), Sevan Marine (£1.2million), Ikon Science (£1.2million), Well Ops (UK) (£1.2million) and Harms Offshore (£1.1million) .
An accountancy source said yesterday: “The big banks would hope to get a decent amount back, but the signs are the administrators are having to scramble around to get some half-decent bids in, so it certainly looks like they are not going to get all their money back.
“There will be a fair bit of pain for a number of local companies who don’t seem to have been keeping a close eye on the levels of credit they have extended.”
A meeting of creditors is to be held this morning. A newspaper said at the weekend that five bidders had made offers for different parts of ONS, and that final bids were due on Friday, March 6.
Administrators at Ernst & Young (E&Y) have already said many parties are interested in acquiring ONS and its assets.
Rivals BG Group, Talisman Energy, Petro-Canada and Maersk Oil have all been linked in the media with possible bids.
Other interested companies could include Abu Dhabi national energy company TAQA.
Oilexco announced on Hogmanay that ONS intended to file petitions for administration “as soon as reasonably practicable”. The group said it had run out of options for ONS after bankers refused to provide further funding.
E&Y was appointed as administrator on Wednesday, January 7.
The news left a questionmark over the future of about 100 ONS staff in Aberdeen and offshore.
E&Y said at the time of its appointment that ONS was an important operator of several fields in the North Sea, including Brenda and Nicol.