Wintershall and BP have agreed to cooperate on new and existing projects in North Africa.This stirs speculation surrounding the sale of RWE-Dea, Germany’s second largest International Oil Company (IOC) that is reportedly a Wintershall acquisition target. Dea, a subsidiary of utility provider RWE, works with BP in Egypt, where both firms are developing the 1bn cfd West Nile Delta offshore gas project, and offers a strategic fit with Wintershall’s North African ambitions (see table).
“The cooperation with Mubadala is focused ... on North Africa in particular. Primarily we will concentrate on untapped fields,” Rainer Seele, Wintershall’s chief executive, said at the company’s annual press conference in Kassel, Germany on 13 March. “We have reached a cooperation agreement with BP last night for the same region, for the northern countries of Africa. This cooperation is directed at both existing BP projects and new projects in the region. We’ve already put our teams together to evaluate the existing opportunities.” (CONTINUED - 859 WORDS)
