Vår Energi, a leader in the hydrocarbon exploration and production sector in Norway, has started the process for listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange (see the press release here).
Vår Energi was born in July 2018 from the merger between Eni Norge as (Eni group) and Point Resources as, controlled by the Norwegian private equity firm HitecVision, the largest private investor in the sector of hydrocarbons in Norway (see here a previous article by BeBeez), The ipo will consist of a public offering in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark and a private placement for certain institutional investors internationally.
Today Vår Energi is 69.85% owned by Milan-listed energy giant Eni and 30.15% by HitecVision. In 2019 Vår Energi acquired Exxon Mobil‘s upstream business in Norway for 4.5 billion dollars (see the press release of the time here), after Point Resources had already acquired ExxonMobil’s Norwegian operations in 2017, including the most of the staff. Vår Energi is now Norway’s largest independent continental shelf operator, with average net production for the three months ending 30 September 2021 of 247,000 boepd and a 2P net reserve base of 1,144 million boe as of 30 September 2021.
The transaction is part of Eni’s strategy of enhancing its assets in order to free up new resources to be allocated for the acceleration of the energy transition strategy. Eni will continue to hold a majority stake in the company, maintaining the consolidation at equity.
We recall that in November 2020 Eni and HitecVision also created another joint venture, named Vårgrønn, a company focused on renewable energy projects in the Nordic market (see here a previous article by BeBeez). The company is owned by Eni with a 69.6% stake, and by HitecVision with a 30.4% stake.
