ONGC Videsh, the overseas arm of the state-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), is close to securing the minimum threshold of shareholder acceptances for acquiring the UK-listed Imperial Energy, a report said today.
OVL can walkout of the estimated $1.9 billion deal to acquire Imperial, which has oilfields in Russia, if less than 90 per cent of Imperial shareholders accept its offer of 12.50 pounds a share by tomorrow afternoon (GMT).
“Imperial has received a flurry of acceptances from shareholders in the past few days, in spite of the Christmas holiday, and expects to receive more today, the final full day of business available,” the Financial Times reported on its web site today.
OVL is closing on the 90 per cent level of acceptances, Financial Times said without saying where it got the information from.
In India, OVL remained tight-lipped on the transaction, offering no comments on the number of shares tendered so far.
There have been murmurs of ONGC looking at options to revise or withdraw the offer as returns have plummeted with the slide on crude oil prices.
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The offer was made at a time when the international price of crude was hovering around $128 a barrel. Crude has since then shaved-off two-third of those levels, resulting in a drastic fall in returns to 3-4 per cent from 12.6 per cent estimated keeping crude oil price at $100 per barrel.
ONGC officers union has also opposed the deal saying Imperial had consistently failed to live-up the targeted crude oil production.
Association of Scientific and Technical Officers (ASTO) said Imperial’s crude production was much lower than its claimed output of 12,000 barrels per day and is in no position to meet the targeted output of 25,000 bpd by 2008-end.
“Quality of deal is also questionable as the local Russian company like Rosneft has refused to be partner in the deal at this (acquisition) cost),” ASTO said in a letter to ONGC Chairman and Managing Director R S Sharma.
The deal is the first attempt by ONGC to buy a London-listed company.
When the Indian cabinet approved the proposal in August 2008, Imperial was producing oil around 7,000 bpd, targeting to increase the production to 25,000 bpd by end of 2008 and 80,000 bpd by end of 2011. The production is likely to go up to 130,000 bpd by end of 2015.
Imperial had 920 million barrels of oil equivalent of 2P (proved plus probable) hydrocarbon reserves. D&M, an independent US reservoir firm had put the 3P (proved plus probable plus possible) reserves around 3.4 billion boe. 1P (proved) reserves have at least 90 per cent probability while 2P and 3P reserves have at least 50 per cent and 10 per cent probability, respectively.
Sharma had recently reasoned the Imperial buy on the 3P reserves of 3.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
OVL had estimated the overall acquisition cost of IEC around $3.26 per barrel. The operating cost was estimated in the rang of $6-7 per barrel on the field life basis. This is also more or less in tune with the operating cost estimated by D&M.
However, the capital cost considered by OVL is about $7.1 per barrel which higher than $5.4 per barrel considered by D&M.