Cairn Energy has become the latest established oil company to sell UK North Sea assets to a relative newcomer, as the area undergoes a further significant change of ownership.
The Edinburgh-based company has sold its stakes in the Catcher and Kraken fields for $460m in cash to Waldorf Production, a company headed by Erik Brodahl, who has lengthy experience in the oil and gas-focused private equity industry. Investec analyst Nathan Piper said the sale price was ahead of his $350m valuation.
The sale of Cairn’s 20 per cent holding in Catcher and 29.5 per cent stake in Kraken — both of which started producing oil in 2017 — is the latest in a flurry of UK North Sea deals as more established players continue to pull back from the ageing basin to focus on lower cost regions elsewhere.
US oil major Exxon last month sold a group of North Sea assets to Norwegian private equity group HitecVision in a deal worth at least $1bn. HitecVision’s UK arm, Neo Energy, also this…