German energy company Wintershall unloads some of its holdings offshore Norway, but stresses production targets remain in place. Photo courtesy of Wintershall.
KASSEL, Germany, June 19 (UPI) -- German energy company Wintershall said it was working to streamline its capital structure by selling off a handful of assets on the Norwegian continental shelf.
"We continue our strategy to grow at the source," Martin Bachmann, the Wintershall board member in charge of exploration and production in Europe, said in a statement. "With this transaction we are selling shares in non-operated fields at a competitive price and reducing our investment obligations."
Wintershall said it was selling its minority shares in four fields on the Norwegian shelf to Tellus Petroleum, which has headquarters in Oslo. Tellus, which said its strategic goal is to become a premier player offshore Norway, agreed to pay more than $600 million to acquire the assets from Wintershall.
Tellus, founded in 2012, said the proven and probable reserves in the acquired assets are around 59 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Though low oil prices are expected to drag on revenues, Wintershall has said it plans to ramp up production from its core assets by 40 percent by 2018.
The German company said the sale of non-operated assets in Norway won't impact its production targets for the region. As one of the largest license holders in Norway, Wintershall aims to raise production to 190 million barrels of oil equivalent by 2018.
Last month, the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, the nation's energy regulator, reviewed the resource base on the continental shelf from 2005-14. By 2015, NPD set a goal of adding 5 billion barrels of oil to national reserves.
