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Eric Ng

Shares of Brightoil Petroleum, a mainland company that supplies fuel to ships, trades in oil and is engaged in the logistics business, surged yesterday after it agreed to pay HK$8.35 billion for stakes in two mature oilfields off northern China from US oil firm Anadarko Petroleum.
The deal - pending approval from the Ministry of Commerce, and Brightoil obtaining a loan facility by July 10 - will allow the firm to diversify further into upstream oil and gas production.
Brightoil, which is struggling to make a profit from its oil trading, transport and storage operations, already has gas production operations in northwest China.
"The acquisition is an important step towards the implementation of the group's strategy to expand the upstream business," Brightoil, which is controlled by mainland businessman Sit Kwong-lam, said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
The assets to be bought include a 40.09 per cent stake in one oilfield and a 29.17 per cent stake in the other. They also include a 50 per cent interest in an exploration project, the exploration rights of which will be relinquished since it failed to discover commercial quantities of oil.
China's dominant offshore oil producer, CNOOC, owns a 51 per cent interest in both oilfields, which are in Bohai Bay about 100 kilometres southeast of Tianjin.
The combined output from the two areas fell 23.7 per cent from the previous year to 11.7 million barrels last year.
Net profit of the assets to be bought fell to HK$622.3 million last year from HK$1.52 billion in 2012, owing to expenses of HK$730 million in the exploration project.
Excluding the expenses, profit from the two producing areas would have been HK$1.35 billion last year. This implies the acquisition is priced at 6.2 times the net profit of the assets, which Simon Powell, CLSA's head of Asia oil and gas equities research, said seemed inexpensive.
Brightoil's shares surged 26.5 per cent yesterday to close at HK$2.81.
Powell said the rate of decline of the fields' future production was a factor.
"We know a large number of Bohai Bay fields are seeing natural decline rates of 5 to 10 per cent, which can be quite high," he said.


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Many oilfields in Bohai Bay are experiencing output declines of 5-10 per cent a year. Photo: Xinhua

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A major upstream purchase may be behind Brightoil's trading halt. Photo: SCMP Pictures

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Business

Commodities

Struggling petroleum firm agrees to buy mature oilfields in bid to move upstream
