Abu Dhabi National Energy Co (Taqa) is planning to invest £750million to make more acquisitions and boost oil output from its UK North Sea operations, its chief executive said yesterday.
Peter Barker-Homek said: “We will be investing £250million a year for the next three years. Over the next year we will be staffing an organisation with about 400 to 600 people.”
A spokeswoman said most of these would be workers transferring from Shell and also contractors following Taqa’s acquisition of a package of North Sea assets from Shell and ExxonMobil.
They would be working out of Taqa’s new UK headquarters at Westhill, where it was moving to shortly, she said.
The company employs about 12 staff now but this is expected to increase to 40 by October.
Taqa said last month it was buying the two oil giants’ interests in the Tern, Kestrel, Eider, Pelican, Otter, Hudson, Cormorant North and Cormorant South fields plus related infrastructure. A value for the deal, expected to conclude in the final quarter of this year, was not disclosed.
The company also has interests in the Brae assets it acquired from Talisman early last year and it farmed into the Drum field in November. Taqa aims initially to raise its UK production to 60,000 barrels from 40,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).
Mr Barker-Homek said the company, whose strategy is to have one-third of its business in each of Europe, the Middle East and North America, is targeting total output of 250,000boepd by 2012, more than double the 119,200 average in the second quarter.
Taqa, 75%-owned by the Abu Dhabi government, was aiming for 2billion barrels of proven and probable reserves by the same date, he added.
It also plans to almost treble the value of its assets to £30billion by the end of 2012 from £11.7billion at the end of June.
Taqa said second-quarter profits had more than doubled, boosted by foreign acquisitions and high oil prices. Revenue surged more than 155% year-on-year to £620million, driven mainly by a jump in income from oil and gas activities to £313.2million.
Pre-tax profits were £139.37million against £38.37million a year earlier.
The firm, founded in 2005, has as its principal objectives investment in power generation, water desalination, and oil and gas.
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