By Katarina Gustafsson
Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil ASA (STO) Tuesday said it
has signed a deal to buy a floating production, storage and
offloading unit from Maersk (MAERSK-B.KO) for an undisclosed
figure.
The unit, which Statoil will buy together with its partner
Sinochem, has been used at the Statoil-operated Peregrino field
offshore Brazil since production start-up in 2011.
Norwegian company BW Offshore Ltd. (BWO.OS) will take over the
operations on the floating production, storage and offloading, or
FPSO, unit from Maersk and the transition is expected to take at
least around six months.
The Peregrino FPSO has a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels
of oil, and produced well over 15 million barrels during its first
year of operation, said Statoil.
Statoil owns seven licenses in Brazil.
"Brazil plays an important part in Statoil's international
growth strategy specialising in deep water and heavy oil. We've
been present in Brazil since 2001 and this was the right time for
us to invest further," said Thore E Kristiansen, head of
development and production international, South America and
sub-Saharan Africa in Statoil.
At 1416 GMT Statoil shares traded 0.2% lower at NOK136.30.
-Write to Katarina Gustafsson at
katarina.gustafsson@dowjones.com
