Hungarian oil and gas group MOL has about 4 billion euros to spend on acquisitions and is looking at possible targets in the North Sea, Russia and also in Pakistan, MOL's upstream chief told Reuters on Thursday.
MOL, which has refineries in central Europe and upstream interests in Hungary, Croatia, Russia, Kurdistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, bought stakes in North Sea offshore fields in 2013. Alexander Dodds, 57, MOL's executive vice president for exploration and production, said MOL still wanted to boost its crude production to 170,000-180,000 barrels per day by 2018, from around 104,000 now.
He said a part of this growth would be produced organically from MOL's existing portfolio. MOL has assigned just under $1 billion in capex for 2015 for its upstream organic portfolio.
"We're still pursuing acquisitions particularly in this low price environment," Dodds said in an interview.
"There is access to about 4 billion euros of potential acquisition money. (But) we are in no rush to acquire."
He said MOL was trying to balance its asset portfolio which was heavily skewed on the high-risk side at the moment, and further acquisitions in the North Sea would help achieve that.
Dodds said he believed the oil price has not yet hit a bottom and any assets that MOL would approach must pass "the stress test economically to survive a further decline in price."
Dodds said MOL was eyeing a potential company acquisition, and also a potential asset acquisition, in the Norway area of the North Sea. He declined to give further detail.
"In the UK sector of the North Sea we have got the opportunity for an additional two asset acquisitions: they are both in the central and northern North Sea," he added.
In Pakistan, he said MOL was in the closing stages of acquiring a 51 percent interest in the Baska block from China's Zhenhua Oil Co.
In Russia, Dodds said MOL was negotiating "a potential joint venture or the acquisition of assets, with a party that has got both." He declined to name the company. But he said this potential acquisition would more than double MOL's current output from Russia which is about 6,000 barrels per day.
In the Kurdistan region of Iraq, MOL holds a 20 percent interest in the Shaikan block - operated by Gulf Keystone - and 80 percent in another block called Akri-Bijeel.
Gulf Keystone announced on Wednesday that it had resumed production and truck exports.
Dodds said the risks in Kurdistan were still multifold, but MOL was committed to its investment there and had agreed in principle with the government that as the operator of the Akri-Bijeel field, it would get access to the pipeline that ships crude from Fish Khabur to Ceyhan in Turkey. He said MOL was now negotiating the capacity and tariff rates.
When asked if MOL was interested to buy Gulf Keystone's assets, he said that would have to come with more assurance from the local government that there was a future for oil exports.
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