The company in control of the controversial Cambo oil field will make its investment decision on the project in the first half of next year after completing a planned flotation on the London Stock Exchange by the end of 2022.
Chief executive Alan Bruce said Aberdeen-based Ithaca Energy expects to set the pricing for its listing in the second week of November after completing a roadshow for potential investors. The company, which employs roughly half of its 500 staff offshore, has been owned by Israel’s Delek Group since 2017 when it was acquired in a £1 billion deal.
Ithaca took a 70 per cent stake in Cambo in June of this year with the $1.5bn acquisition of Siccar Point Energy. That deal also included a 20% stake in another large untapped field, Rosebank, transforming Ithaca into one of the largest exploration and production companies in the UK North Sea.
Mr Bruce said it had “always been the plan” that Delek would build up Ithaca via acquisitions and then re-list the company at an appropriate time.
“Really the timing is more driven by the fact that we completed the acquisition of Siccar Point Energy earlier in the year,” he said, as opposed to the UK’s renewed appetite for domestic oil and gas production.
“Now that we have achieved that and we have achieved the scale required to support the business, that’s the driver for timing rather than any external factors. We are just focused on the factors we can control, which is our operational performance and what we are doing from a strategy perspective.”
Ithaca is currently re-validating the cost and schedule estimates on developing Cambo and Rosebank, which is expected to be completed by the end of this year. A final investment decision will be made in the first half of 2023.
READ MORE: Majority owner of controversial Cambo oil field moves closer to flotation
Cambo is expected to yield up to 170 million barrels of oil equivalent over 25 years, plus 53.5 billion cubic feet of gas. It has been a major symbol in the fight between environmental campaigners who want to immediately end fossil fuel production and the oil industry, which prefers a more gradual approach.
Ithaca’s portfolio consists of 28 producing fields including six of the top 10 oil and gas producing fields in the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS). Mr Bruce said the company will continue expandin through investment in existing assets and further mergers and acquisitions.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel