Panoro Energy to bid for Tullow Oil West Africa’s Assets

Panoro Energy ASA is an independent E&P company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and based in London.  They have exploration and production assets in Africa with oil production from fields in Tunisia, Gabon and Nigeria.

On the 9th February, 2021, Tullow Oil signed two separate sale and purchase agreement for some of its non-operated offshore oil fields in Equatorial Guinea (The EG Transaction) and the Dussafu assets in Gabon (The Dussafu Transaction), with Panoro Energy.  This agreement is a strategic business decision to enable both companies execute their respective business growth plan.

Tullow Oil has keen interest in Ghana and boost immensely of the flagship fields it operates in the West African Country.  The move will help reduce Tullow’s debt pile of about $2.4billion, which is about four times its current market cap of $577million.

An initial amount of $140million will be paid with an option of $40 million, which will be tied to oil prices and the performance of the acquired assets.

Tullow is already discussing with its lenders to restructure its debt to narrow its focus to the operating fields in Ghana.  Is this a move to push for more exploration activities in Ghana because of the high quality in the crude?

Panoro plans to finance with a $70million private equity placement and $90 million in debt underwritten by commodities trader Trafigura.  The marketing of the oil obtained from these acquired fields will be done by Trafigura.

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The deal covers a 14.25% stake in Block G offshore Equatorial Guinea and 10% in Gabon’s Dussafu Marin Permit, in which Panoro already has some presence.  The fields are shown in the drawings in figure 1 and 2 below.

For Panoro, this deal adds 6,900bbl/d to their net production, which is quadrupling to their current production.  This projected production numbers will enable Panoro to start paying dividends in 2023.

According to the CEO of Panoro, John Hamilton, the company will continue to look at acquisition opportunities of this sort in the future.

During an interview with Reuters, Panoro CEO said, “There are a number of companies, including the oil majors, who are busy looking to rationalize their portfolios in some of these countries and we do see growth opportunities in these areas,”

United Kingdom to reduce carbon emissions from industries using Green Hydrogen projects.

The prime minister of UK, Boris Johnson, has plans to making UK the world leader in clean energy.  The focus is to invest in projects across the green sector, as well as upgrade infrastructure and facilities.  This will further push the government’s agenda towards a net zero emission by 2050.

According to the IEA, energy consumption will increase, and prediction on global energy demand will continue to soar by between 25% and 30% by 2040.  By this, there is the need to look at alternative sources of energy as well as taking into consideration its climate friendliness.

Swansea University in collaboration with Hanson UK are looking at innovative technologies to reduce industrial carbon emission.

A process of electrolysis is used to produce hydrogen, with the source of energy being renewable.  By this philosophy, a new hydrogen demonstration unit has been developed and installed at Hanson UK’s Regen GGBS plant in Port Talbot, South of Wales as part of the £9.2m ERDf funded RICE project.

The aim of this demonstration unit is to confirm that, the use of green hydrogen is cleaner than natural gas since rather than CO2 being emitted, the process emits water.  However, according to IEA, this method of producing green hydrogen would save the 830 million tonnes of CO2, emitted annually when this gas is produced using fossil fuel as the source of energy.

A typical target for this technology is in cement production since it is energy intensive due to the high temperatures required to produce the clinker (main Portland cement component).  However, even Regen GGBS, which can be used to replace about 80% of cement component in concrete; has carbon footprint of about one tenth of Portland cement.  Let us assume a Regeb GGBS plant is green hydrogen powered, using a renewable source of energy in the electrolysis process.

Marian Garfield, Head of Sustainability at Hanson UK, said: “It is estimated that cement is the source of just under 1.5 per cent of UK CO2 emissions. With demand for cement and cement replacement products predicted to increase by a quarter by 2030, researchers and industry are working hard to reduce the level of carbon emissions associated with production.”

He further stated, “As a leading manufacturer, we take our responsibility very seriously. In the UK we have already achieved a 30 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions since 1990 across the business and have set an ambitious new target of a 50 per cent reduction by 2030 from the same baseline. We are constantly looking to improve energy efficiency and carbon reduction at our cement and Regen plants, so we are delighted to be involved with this innovative research project.”

Dr Charlie Dunnill, who is leading the team based at the Energy Safety Research Institute, added: “It has been a pleasure to work with the staff at Hanson and is amazing to see technology from our labs interacting in real time with local industry, actually producing hydrogen that can be burned in exchange for natural gas to lower their green-house emissions.”

The future looks greener as this technology is being developed and when careful infused into other sectors like industries, transportation and homes, the goal of reducing carbon will be less of a tussle.

Source: AFRICAENERGYTODAY