MOSCOW (MRC) -- Ineos Energy said it has agreed to sell its Norwegian oil and gas business to Poland's PGNiG Upstream Norway AS for USD615 million, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
The deal includes all of INEOS' oil and gas interests in production, licenses, fields, facilities and pipelines. INEOS Energy was formed late last year, incorporating the group's existing oil and gas assets, and is chaired by former BP finance chief Brian Gilvary.
"The deal allows us to monetize a non-operated, predominantly gas portfolio at an attractive price compared to our hold value," Gilvary said in a statement. The purchase of INEOS E&P Norge AS, with its estimated 117 million barrels of oil equivalent, would bring PGNiG Upstream Norway's output to about 1.5 billion cubic metres (bcm) annually over the next five years, PGNiG said in a separate statement.
PGNiG expects its annual gas production in Norway to reach 4 bcm in 2027. "Acquisition of the INEOS E&P Norge AS assets means a sharp increase in our gas output in Norway, and will ensure considerable gas volumes for the Baltic Pipe," PGNiG CEO Pawel Majewski said.
The Polish company sees supplies from Norway as an alternative to its gas purchases from Russia beyond 2022. The Baltic Pipe gas pipeline project will connect Poland with Norwegian gas fields via the Baltic Sea and Denmark and is due to begin operations in October 2022 and have an annual capacity of around 10 bcm.
As per MRC, Zhuhai Ineos, a subsidiary of oil company Ineos, on March 17 halted production on its third purified terephthalic acid (PTA) line at its Zhuhai plant in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, South China for unscheduled activities. The production with a capacity of 1.25 million tonnes of PTA was closed due to a technical breakdown. According to market sources, it was originally planned to carry out maintenance from late March to late April.
PTA is one of the main raw materials for the production of polyesters, which are widely used for the manufacture of textiles, packaging and film, as well as for the production of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).
According to MRC's ScanPlast, in Russia the total estimated PET consumption in December amounted to 71.830 tonnes, which is 8% higher than the consumption indicator for the same month of 2019. In total, in 2020, the volume of PET consumption in all sectors (casting, threads / fibers, films) decreased by 17% compared to the level of 2019 and amounted to 717,310 tonnes.
Ineos Group manufactures and markets a wide range of petroleum products and specialty chemicals, including acetone, acrylonitrile, acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene, cyclic olefin copolymers, ethylene, ethylene glycol, ethylene oxide, low pressure polyethylene, polypropylene and other aromatic compounds, polystyrene, polyvinylchloride propylene, propylene glycol, propylene oxide, PVC compounds, styrene.
MRC