Equinor has closed the planned sale of its assets in Nigeria and Azerbaijan for a total consideration of up to $2 billion, completing exits from the two countries after some 30 years, the Norwegian oil and gas firm said on Monday.
The divestments, first announced in 2023 and completed in recent weeks, will boost cash flow in the fourth quarter and were in line with Equinor’s strategy to optimise its international portfolio, the group said in a statement.
“The exits enable investments to deepen further in countries where Equinor can add the most value and build a more focused and robust international portfolio,” the company said without elaborating.
Equinor has previously said it plans to increase its international output by some 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed) by 2030 by bringing on stream new fields in Brazil, Britain and the United States.
In Nigeria, Equinor sold its assets, including a 20.21% stake in the Agbami oil field operated by Chevron, to Chappal Energies for up to $1.2 billion, consisting of $710 million in cash and the remainder in contingent payments.
The company did not say how market prices and other factors could affect contingent payments.
In Azerbaijan it sold a 7.27% stake in the Azeri Chirag Gunashli (ACG) field, a 8.71% stake in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline and a 50% stake in the Karabagh project to Azerbaijan’s SOCAR and India’s ONGC for a total of $745 million.
Equinor’s net production in Azerbaijan and Nigeria averaged 24,600 and 17,700 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed), respectively, during the first three quarters of 2024.
(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)