Austrian OMV to buy Siberian assets instead of swapping them

/ Financial News / Monday, 08 October 2018 11:52

The Austrian oil and gas group OMV announced that it will be negotiating with Russian Gazprom a stake purchase in a major project in Siberia after the failure of an asset exchange plan between the two companies.

Back to the end of 2016, the Russian giant and the Austrian producer signed an agreement whereby OMV agreed to exchange 38.5% of its assets in Norway for 24.98% of a section of the Gazprom Urengoy gas field in Siberia.

The agreement was stumbling because of Norway's veto over the Russian group's access to its submarine coastal zone, energy experts said.

However, lately, the two companies decided to forget about the previous agreement and sign a new one to negotiate the sale of shares of the Urengoy field to OMV, according to a statement from the Austrian company. The statement also mentioned that the desire of a 24.98% Austrian stake will remain untouched and the amount of the transaction must be “negotiated in good faith.”

The two groups hope to complete their negotiations by “early 2019”.

According to OMV, the participation of the Austrian group in the Atchimov project, which belongs to the Urengoy gas field in the Russian Far North, will represent reserves of 560 million barrels of oil equivalent in addition to a production of around 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

OMV, integrated group from production to distribution, explores fields particularly in Romania, the North Sea, the Middle East, Libya and Russia.

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