ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas investment arm of state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), has acquired Norwegian firm Equinor's stake in an Azerbaijan oilfield and an associated pipeline for USD 60 million, the firm said in a statement. OVL "has signed a definitive sale purchase agreement (SPA) for directly acquiring 0.615 per cent participating interest (PI) in offshore Azeri Chirag Gunashli (ACG) oil field in Azerbaijan from Equinor.
The agreement also includes acquiring 0.737 per cent shares of the Baku Tbilisi Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline company through its wholly-owned subsidiary ONGC BTC Limited," it added. The acquisitions, expected to be completed in the upcoming months, involve a total investment of up to USD 60 million.
OVL currently has a 2.31 per cent stake in the ACG field and 2.36 per cent in the BTC pipeline.
The buyout of Equinor will help raise its stake. Equinor, in December last year, announced an agreement to sell all its remaining assets in Azerbaijan to SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic). The assets comprised a 7.
27 per cent non-operated interest in the Azeri Chirag Gunashli oil fields in the Azerbaijan sector of the Caspian Sea, 8.71 per cent interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline and 50 per cent in the Karabakh field. SOCAR already held a 25.
0 per cent stake in ACG, a 25.0 per cent stake in BTC via Azerbaijan BTC Limited, and 50 per cent in Karabakh. It is not clear how Eqinor, which had agreed to sell all of its stake to .