Israeli gas group New Med Energy announced today that it has received an offer to buy 50% of its capital from both British Petroleum and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company ADNOC of the United Arab Emirates for $4 billion. .
BP confirmed in a press statement that it had submitted the offer without disclosing the cost. New Med Energy owns more than 45 percent of the Leviathan field, Israel’s largest offshore natural gas field.
The company confirmed that the offer it received on Monday is non-binding, noting that an audit committee has been appointed to study the details of the deal, which will include the purchase of all of the Israeli company’s traded shares and a small portion of the shares held by Delek, a giant Israeli holding company that is one of the subsidiaries of New Med.
BP said it “has made a non-binding offer to ADNOC to acquire the private company New Med Energy by acquiring outstanding shares and acquiring a portion of Delek’s stake to become a 50 percent owner of New Med Energy.”
In a statement, BP described the deal as an “important first step” in light of its desire and ADNOC’s “to establish a new joint venture focused on gas production in international areas of mutual interest, including in the eastern Mediterranean.”
Yossi Apo, CEO of Israel’s New Med, said the proposal was “the result of the warm relationship and bridges built in recent years with energy companies operating in the region.”
In a statement, he added that the proposal was an “important vote of confidence” in “the Israeli gas market in general and New Med Energy’s business and assets in particular.”
The Leviathan field was discovered in 2010 and is located 130 km west of Haifa. According to an Israeli company, it contains 605 billion cubic meters of natural gas, as well as 34.1 million barrels of oil and gas condensate.
The field began production in December 2013, and Israel uses some of the gas from the field, to which it is connected by pipelines, and is also exported to Egypt and Jordan.
Source: AFP.
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