Central and Eastern Europe leading oil and gas company MOL, has successfully closed the previously announced deal with Chevron Global Ventures and Chevron BTC Pipeline, regarding the acquisition of their non-operated exploration and production (E&P) and mid-stream interests in Azerbaijan.
These include a 9.57 per cent stake in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) oil field and an effective 8.9 per cent stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that transports the crude to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, for a total consideration of 1.57 billion US dollars and with an effective date of 1 January 2019.
A first agreement was signed last year in November, in line with MOL’s 2030 strategy that envisions to strengthen MOL’s integrated and resilient business model, to enhance sustainability and competitiveness of MOL’s E&P portfolio and to strengthen the company’s footprint in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region through a non-operated position with world-class partners like BP and SOCAR as host.
“This major 1.57 billion US dollars transaction is a significant milestone in building our international E&P portfolio, in one of our core regions, the CIS, where we will team up with world-class partners,” had commented Zsolt Hernádi, MOL Group’s Chairman and CEO. “Following the closing of the deal, around half of our production will come from outside the CEE region, giving us a healthy balance. With these new barrels we are also strengthening our resilient, integrated business model, which will continue to generate robust cash flow to finance the MOL 2030 transformational projects as well as rising dividends to our shareholders.”
Now that the transaction is complete, MOL becomes the third-largest field partner in ACG, a supergiant oil field, located in the Caspian Sea. Operated by BP and encompassing six offshore production platforms, ACG produced an average 584,000 barrels per day in 2018.
