In one of their first battles for resources in the global corporate world, India and China’s target is Imperial Energy – an Independent oil and gas group, listed in London, with holdings mainly in western Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Imperial energy has confirmed that China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (better known as Sinopec and Asia’s biggest oil refiner by capacity) and India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) have both submitted bids, expressing their interest to acquire the company. While negotiations are still on, the Telegraph reported that Sinopec is expected to trump a putative £12.90-a-share offer, valuing the company at £1.1 billion from India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and table a bid that could value the FTSE 250 group at around £1.3bn.
Both China and India have encouraged their state-owned oil and gas giants to diversify and expand their access to scarce energy resources, in part to fuel the two nations’ near-insatiable appetite for oil and gas.
Both the countries have been actively seeking access to new oil deposits in Russia. Sinopec bought a middling Russian oil exploration company, Udmurtneft, in partnership with Russian state oil producer Rosneft for a total of $3.5 billion in 2006. ONGC, charged with securing overseas energy resources to power India’s booming economy, is similarly a partner in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas consortium headed by the US major, ExxonMobil.
Imperial Energy plans to produce 25,000 barrels of oil a day by the end of the year and has 450 million barrels of reserves at its fields in Russia. The company pumped 7,000 barrels a day in the first quarter, it said in April. Imperial Energy expects to start production this September at its Kiev Eganskoye field in Siberia, east of the Ob River.
Oil and gas producers have announced about $187 billion of mergers and acquisitions this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, as companies seek to add reserves.
