Thursday, November 27, 2008

Tomsk Region Of Western Siberia Acquisition - Nov 27, 2008

On November 26 ONGC informed that its $2.1 billion acquisition of UK-listed Imperial Energy Corp Plc was "well on-track" and the fall in global oil prices would not be a constraint in the buyout. The Government of India holds 74 per cent stake in ONGC.ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of ONGC, is not revising the 12.50 pounds a share buyout price of Imperial, as it had valued the company''s in place 2P (proven and probable), oil and gas reserves at $2.5-3 per barrel.

Imperial explores for oil in Russia''s Siberia region and had the equivalent of 920 million barrels of proven and probable oil reserves as on December 2007, according to an audit by DeGolyer & MacNaughton. Acquisition of Imperial will cost OVL about 1.4 billion pounds or $2.1 billion at current exchange rates. There have been speculations that OVL may revise its bid price as crude oil prices have fallen from $115-120 a barrel, when it made the offer in August to around $50 per barrel currently. Till December 9 OVL has time to make an offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Imperial. The offer would remain open for 28 days and OVL would take another 14 days thereafter to make payments to shareholders tendering their shares.

OVL, earlier this month won the Russian government''s approval for taking over Imperial, which has assets in Tomsk region of western Siberia.Russia''s Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) granted approval for the takeover in respect of ownership of Russian entities by entities controlled by a foreign government. Prior to this, FAS had cleared the acquisition under anti-monopoly regulations and stated that Imperial''s assets were non-strategic. Since July, Imperial has been producing 11,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). Output will reach 25,000 bpd by fiscal-end with 18 wells coming on stream.

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