TotalEnergies strikes deal with Kazakh oil magnates

Two of Kazakhstan’s high oil magnates have agreed to purchase what quantities to a 60% working curiosity within the Dunga onshore heavy oil improvement within the Mangistau area within the west of the nation, in a deal that vendor TotalEnergies says is price about $330 million.

The French supermajor described an settlement to promote its Kazakh affiliate, Whole E&P Dunga, to locally-owned Oriental Dawn, reportedly owned by Kazakh businessmen Bauyrzhan Bisembayev and Zhan Makatov.

A 60% stake within the Dunga improvement would give Oriental Dawn a web manufacturing of roughly 7400 barrels of oil equal per day.

The Dunga discipline is described because the second largest producer within the Mangistau province, answerable for about 19% of the entire oil output within the area.

The transaction is topic to the approval of the authorities of Kazakhstan and the waiver of the companions’ preemption rights, TotalEnergies stated.

Different shareholders are Oman Oil and Portugal’s Partex Oil & Gasoline, the 2 unique founders of the enterprise.

The pair lowered their 50% stakes within the mission to twenty% in 2002 to permit a farm-in by Denmark’s Maersk Oil, later acquired by TotalEnergies.

Bold duo

Oriental Dawn was solely based on 17 November 2022, simply 11 days earlier than the announcement of the sale, with company registers indicating that Bisembayev and Makatov are the homeowners, based on Kazakh media.

Each businessmen are additionally shareholders in one other Kazakh enterprise, Magnetic Oil, based on Vlast, a Kazakh newspaper.

Magnetic Oil was integrated in December 2020, simply earlier than the agency signed a deal to amass Kazakh property from Romania’s OMV Petrom, a subsidiary of Austria’s OMV, gaining possession of manufacturing licenses for 4 onshore fields additionally within the Mangistau area — Komsomolskoe, Aktas, Tasbulat and Turkmenoi — producing 6760 boepd on the time.

The Mangistau area boasts two Caspian ports — Aktau and Kuryk — the place Kazakh authoritieswish to flip into key transit factorsfor exporting crude throughout the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan and onwards to worldwide markets by way of Georgia and Turkey.