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Chevron first Supermajor to exit Norway

Chevron is the first oil supermajor to leave the Norwegian Continental Shelf, after Norway’s authorities accepted the sale of the only asset of the U.S. firm—a 20-percent stake in an exploration license, Upstream reported on Wednesday.

According to a letter to Chevron from Norway’s Petroleum Ministry dated September 28 and obtained by Reuters, Chevron is transferring its 20-percent stake in the so-called PL859 exploration license operated by Equinor in Norway’s Arctic.

Chevron struck a deal with Norwegian company DNO in July for the stake transfer, a spokeswoman for the U.S. major told Reuters, without disclosing the value of the transaction.

“The transaction is subject to certain conditions and approvals, and is expected to take a number of months to close,” the spokeswoman told Reuters.

Chevron’s Norwegian exit comes as the oil and gas major is also looking to sell several of its assets in the UK North Sea after it decided to start the process of marketing all its assets in the UK Central North Sea this summer.

Divesting assets in Norway and the UK is part of Chevron’s strategy to focus more on the U.S. shale patch and on the huge Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan.

Earlier this month, Equinor signed a deal to buy Chevron’s 40-percent stake in the Rosebank project northwest of the Shetland Islands, in what the Norwegian oil major said was one of the largest undeveloped fields on the UK Continental Shelf.

Chevron also adds to a group of supermajors, including Shell and BP, who have been either selling or merging their assets offshore Norway.

Shell announced in June an agreement with OKEA AS to sell its entire 44.56-percent stake in the Draugen field and the 12-percent interest in the Gjøa field in Norway for US$556 million.

BP, for its part, doesn’t have direct stakes in assets offshore Norway anymore, but the UK supermajor owns 30 percent in Norwegian oil firm Aker BP, which is an active operator and explorer offshore Norway.

Published: 12-10-2018

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