By Sarah Young | Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) – Dana Petroleum is mulling acquisitions and looking for new projects in North Africa to help fulfil an ambitious growth plan, and believes backing from Korea National Oil Company (KNOC), its owner since 2010, will help it outpace its peers.
“You can do these things that most small independents, medium-sized independents, wouldn’t necessarily have the ability to do. It’s about leveraging that,” Chief Executive Marcus Richards told Reuters in an interview.
Dana has laid out plans to almost double last year’s oil production by 2016, said Richards, a former BP executive who joined Dana last March, adding the firm will look to KNOC’s firepower to fund deals where necessary.
“If we do see something that actually fits exactly what we’re trying to do strategically then of course we have the opportunity of going back to KNOC,” Richards said.
Relations between Dana and its owner were less cordial two years ago when Aberdeen, Scotland-based Dana, which Richards said operates independently from KNOC, was bought by the Korean firm in a $2.9 billion hostile takeover.
The deal attracted attention at the time for being the first time an Asian state-owned company had ever proceeded with an unsolicited bid, as Korea, the world’s No.5 oil importer sought to boost its reserves.
Dana’s production is on course to reach 100,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) in five years through organic growth alone, said Richards, from an estimated 2011 level of 55,000 bopd, adding that the company plans to invest $1 billion a year to fund growth.
The company, which has a presence in the North Sea, North Africa and West Africa, is looking to increase its exposure to North Africa, where it sees an opportunity in the space below the oil majors’ radar to re-develop older fields and bring smaller fields into production.
“Libya is certainly of interest to us. From Libya through to Algeria, we’re already in Morocco, is something that we’re actively looking at and having a dialogue with the key players,” Richards said.
“It is a different business model. It’s about joint ventures, it’s about developing small- to medium-sized pools, it is about using local services.”
The company has a number of such opportunities in the pipeline, he added, declining to specify further.
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