THE CHAIRMAN of North Sea focused Serica Energy has paid tribute to oil major BP as well as the UK Government and Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) after announcing that its acquisition of interests in the Bruce, Keith and Rhum fields has finally completed.
The company agreed a year ago to buy BP’s stakes in the fields for a total consideration of £300 million, before announcing in August that it would acquire Total’s Bruce and Keith interests for $20m.
In November, the firm said it had agreed to buy further interests in Bruce and Keith from BHP Billiton and Marubeni.
While the BP deal was scheduled to complete earlier this year it was pushed back to this month to allow more time to overcome regulatory hurdles. The Total acquisition was dependant on the BP deal closing.
Serica chairman Tony Craven Walker said the acquisitions are “transformational” for the business, adding that they make the firm “one of the leading mid-tier independent exploration and production companies operating in the UK North Sea”.
“Undertaking four simultaneous and interconnected transactions has not been easy and we are grateful for the support from BP, our field partners, the UK Government and the OGA to help us overcome the various challenges and bring this to a successful conclusion,” he said.
He added that the firm aims to be at the forefront of the North Sea’s recovery.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here