BP sweetens North Sea asset sale to UK's Premier Oil

BP plans to reach net zero carbon emissions across all its operations on an absolute basis by 2050. REUTERS

British oil major BP has agreed to discount the price of the North Sea assets it is selling to Premier Oil, Premier said on Friday.

Under the new deal, Premier only has to pay $115 million out of the initial price of $625m if oil prices, which have slumped around 40 per cent this year and currently stand at around $40 a barrel, rise above $55 a barrel.

The agreement also reduces Premier's liability for field abandonment to $240m from $600m.

The revised price highlights how the crude price collapse is forcing sellers of oil and gas asset to compromise.

"The structure of the consideration and phasing of payments are being adjusted to reflect the material developments in global commodity markets," Premier said in a statement.

Under the deal, which is effective from January 2019, BP will retain the $300m the North Sea fields generated throughout 2019, bringing the cash payment due to the British oil major down to around $210m.

To fund the acquisition, Premier said it would issue 82.2 million new shares to activist investor ARCM at a price of 26.69 pence each, a 9.64 per cent discount to the volume-weighted average price over the last five days.

This represents around 9 per cent of the company, which had a market capitalisation of $336m as of Thursday and $1.9 billion in net debt.

The new arrangement with ARCM, which owns around 15 per cent of Premier's debt and has a large short position in its shares, allows Premier to proceed with the deal. ARCM will use the new shares to reduce its short position of around 17 per cent.

Meanwhile, Premier will have to go through a new formal process over the coming weeks to extend its debt maturities from May 2021 into late 2023 as envisaged under the initial BP deal.

Shares in Premier rose on Friday to their highest since oil prices collapsed in early March. They were up around 9 per cent at 0725 GMT, at 34.60 pence.