Report: UK North Sea operator up for sale

Ping Petroleum, a private company with assets in the UK North Sea, has reportedly been put up for sale.

According to the Malaysian business website The Edge Markets, Jefferies International has been tasked with finding a buyer for the company that owns a 50 percent share in the Anasuria Cluster of oil fields in the UK North Sea which it acquired from Shell together with Hibiscus Energy for $105 million in 2015.

The Anasuria Cluster consists of the Teal, Teal South, Guillemot, and Cook fields which produce to the Anasuria FPSO, and is operated by Anasuria Operating Company jointly owned by Ping and Hibiscus.

Ping Petroleum, incorporated in Bermuda in 2012, is a privately held upstream company, with the largest shareholder being DNeX of Malaysia which in September 2015 acquired a 30 percent share in the company for $10 million. While The Edge Markets did not provide the estimated sale value of Ping, it has said that DNeX “may make a killing,” from the potential sale.

Ping Petroleum did not respond to Offshore Energy Today’s email seeking confirmation of the report by The Edge Markets on the reported proposed sale of the company.

As for the recent operations, Ping and Hibiscus are working on the GUA-P1 sidetrack project, which offers an opportunity to re-enter the existing GUA-P1 wellbore and potentially drain additional volumes of hydrocarbons from the Guillemot A field, part of the Anasuria Cluster.

Hibiscus said in a recent that this project is targeted to unlock approximately 1.7 million bbls of oil from Anasuria Hibiscus UK’s current net 2P Reserves.

According to Hibiscus, operations on the GUA-P1 ST have started with the Stena Spey drilling rig mobilized to location and deployed anchors on May 17, 2019.

AOC in February 2019 signed a rig sharing agreement with Ping Petroleum to assume the services of the Stena Spey semi‐submersible offshore drilling unit, for a minimum duration of 45 days, to drill the GUA‐P1 side‐track well.

According to DNeX, following the Gua-P1 ST, a development well would be drilled in Avalon field and will be executed by Ping as the operator of the field. This is part of the development program to develop and bring production online to the Avalon field, DNeX said in March.

Offshore Energy Today Staff

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