ExxonMobil's Norwegian unit said on Wednesday that it had agreed to sell its operated fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf to private equity firm HitecVision and its portfolio oil company Point Resources, saying that under confidentiality obligations, it cannot provide further information regarding the terms and conditions of the sale.
Under the agreement, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS (EEPNAS) is selling the ExxonMobil-operated fields Balder, Ringhorne, Ringhorne Øst, Jotun, and Forseti, as well as ExxonMobil's offices in Sandnes, near Stavanger.
HitecVision was one of the interested buyers bidding to buy Exxon assets in Norway valued at around $1 billion, Bloomberg reported in December last year, citing people in the know.
While it is selling operated fields, Exxon is keeping its refining and downstream businesses in Norway, as well as its ownership stakes in more than 20 producing fields on the Norwegian Continental Shelf operated by other companies. The deal with HitecVision does not include the ExxonMobil-operated Sigyn field either, the Norwegian unit of the U.S. major said in its statement.
Last year the fields subject to the transaction had a total net production of around 54,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd). Exxon's net production from the non-operated fields that are not part of today's deal was about 167,000 boepd in 2016, while Sigyn production stood at around 3,600 boepd last year, the company said.
Norway-based Point Resources said in a separate statement that its 2016 production, including Exxon's 54,000 boepd, was around 60,000 boepd, and that it has the potential to grow its production base organically to over 80,000 boepd by 2022.
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The deal announced today is subject to customary regulatory and partner consents, and is expected to complete in the fourth quarter this year, with an effective date of January 1, 2017, Exxon said.
The U.S. supermajor was said last year to have been seeking to sell some Norwegian assets, while now it is shifting its strategy to U.S. shale and is planning to spend a quarter of its 2017 budget on shale.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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