Wintershall is to sell off more than a dozen North Sea licences after striking a £230million deal with Hungarian oil firm MOL.
The German group will sell 14 of its non-operated stakes, along with hits share in the Sullom Voe terminal on Shetland and the Brent pipeline system.
MOL, which until today was largely focused on Central and Eastern Europe, has also established significant presences in Kurdistan, Syria and Pakistan in recent years.
MOl chairman Zsolt Hernádi described the deal as a ‘milestone’ for the company as it made a move into the UK Continental Shelf.
“The North Sea is the right region for us to make this strategic move,” he said.
“We are sending a clear message to our investors and our competitors that MOL Group is serious about expansion and is able to grow in new areas.
“The North Sea is a well-developed area and carries relatively low political risk compared with some of our other investments, which reduces MOL’s overall E&P “political risk” profile, and the United Kingdom provides a predictable and transparent regulatory environment.”
Watch MOL’s chairman Zsolt Hernádi, E&P VP Alexander Dodds and Wintershall chief executive Rainer Seele discuss the £230m North Sea deal.
The deal will see MOL take over non-operated stakes in the Broom field, along with the Catcher, Cladhan, Scolty and Crathes developments.
The sale is due to be completed early next year, subject to approval by the regulators, but will be financially back-dated to January 1 2013.
Wintershall will retain its focus in the Southern North Sea, where it operates the Wingate platform, along with 23 offshore facilities off the Netherlands. Earlier this year it agreed a $1.4billion swap deal with Statoil over a host of Norwegian North Sea fields.
“We are well on track in implementing our strategy of growth at the source,” said Wintershall chairman Rainer Seele,
“With the divestment of non-operated assets, we can concentrate on strengthening our competencies in exploration, field development and production activities on own-operated assets in the North Sea.”
As part of the deal the two companies will also work together on exploration and production projects in the North Sea.
“The UK and especially the acquired assets fulfilled all of our expectations and criteria for our investment both from a technical, financial and strategic point of view,” said MOL exploration vice president Alexander Dodds.
“We are serious about our upstream expansion and we will continue to grow and deliver positive results within this segment of the industry, both in the North Sea and our other core areas. This will deliver a major step change.”
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