NIGERIA: Heritage Spends $850m To Get Into Nigeria

By Rose Jacobs/Financial Times


Heritage Oil is spending $850m to buy into a cache of Nigerian oilfields in an agreed deal that will give the London-listed explorer significant production capacity and its first exposure to the oil-rich country.

The assets, called OML 30, are being sold by Shell, Total and ENI, and boost Herigate’s net production from 605 barrels per day to 11,500. The Nigerian state continues to hold the 55 per cent controlling stake.

Heritage, founded by former mercenary and security adviser Tony Buckingham, has focused up to now on exploration, with only a small production facility in Russia.

Paul Atherton, finance director, said the cash generated by the eight producing fields would go towards the company’s current exploration projects in Malta, Libya, Tanzania and Kurdistan – as well as exploration in Nigeria, which is estimated to have the biggest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa.

The group also has high hopes for ramping up production at the OML 30 sites, from 35,000 bpd today to 145,000 by 2018. Mr Atherton said that could be achieved with relative ease at properties neglected by the current owners. At peak production under Shell in 1971, the assets under licence yielded 280,000 bpd.

Heritage is financing the deal through a bridging loan from Standard Bank of South Africa and a rights issue underwritten by Canaccord and JPMorgan. The group yielded $1.45bn from the sale of Ugandan assets in 2010, but does not have access to that money while arbiters decide whether the company must pay capital gains tax on the transaction, as Uganda contends.

The Nigeria deal values proven and probable reserves at about $2.74 per barrel, the company said, compared with the $5.73 paid in “precedent transactions”.

The move comes on the heels of investor unrest over pay and bonus awards, with 16 per cent of shareholders – at a company 33 per cent owned by Mr Buckingham – voting down the remuneration report. Heritage reported a $69m loss last year, compared with a profit of $1.22bn in the previous year, helped by the Uganda sale.

Shares have fallen from highs of 465p early last year to 123p last week, as the shadow of the tax disputes with Uganda and Tullow Oil – which bought the Ugandan assets – loom.

Mr Atherton said he expected the Nigerian deal to complete in September.