Halliburton Company is in advanced talks to buy Tulsa-based Summit ESP, an oilfield equipment provider backed by Oklahoma's oil and banking billionaire George Kaiser, Reuters reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the negotiations.
Summit ESP-which engineers, manufactures, and services electrical submersible and surface pumping systems-is financed by Kaiser via investment company Argonaut Private Equity.
Halliburton is seeking to boost its artificial lifts business after its failed plans last year to merge with Baker Hughes, and stalled plans to acquire a similar Russian company.
Three years ago, Halliburton started takeover negotiations with Baker Hughes, but the process was terminated in March last year, after it ran into regulatory opposition.
In December 2016, Halliburton said that it had made a filing with the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) in connection with a potential acquisition of an interest in Novomet Oil Services Holding Limited, an international artificial lift company focusing primarily on electrical submersible pumps. Halliburton has held discussions with various shareholders of Novomet regarding the potential acquisition, including the possibility of acquiring up to 100 percent of the company, the U.S. firm said back then.
According to a Reuters' source familiar with the Russian authorization process, the regulatory review had been stalled over concerns that a U.S. company would own a provider whose equipment would be used in Russia's oil fields.
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Halliburton and Summit ESP have talked a potential deal over the past year, but negotiations have been in fits and starts over divergences in valuation, according to Reuters.
Talk of the Halliburton-Summit ESP deal comes just weeks after the Department of Justice (DOJ) had given the go-ahead to a proposed merger between GE's oil and gas business division and Baker Hughes that would create an oilfield service company bigger than Halliburton, second only to Schlumberger.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More
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