Danish Shipping Firm to Buy Kerr-McGee North Sea Oil Sites

By AP Wire Service

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — EU regulators on Thursday cleared Danish shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S to buy the majority of Oklahoma City-based Kerr-McGee Corp.’s North Sea oil assets.

A.P. Moller is paying $2.95 billion in cash for the sites while Britain’s Centrica PLC is buying four other fields from Kerr-McGee for $566 million.

A.P. Moller’s subsidiary Maersk Olie og Gas, or MOG, will acquire interests in 10 oil and gas fields, five of those as operator, with a current total share of production of some 60,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. In addition, a number of smaller oil and gas discoveries as well as an exploration portfolio will be acquired.

Kerr-McGee said its North Sea assets include reserves of 231 million barrels of oil equivalent, and produced a daily average of 78,000 barrels of oil equivalent during the second quarter of 2005. Oil equivalents measure the energy content rather than the volume of oil and natural gas.

Kerr-McGee has been aggressively changing its business portfolio after coming under pressure from shareholders led by billionaire financier Carl Icahn, who charged that the company wasn’t properly managed.

The A.P. Moller-Maersk group operates the world’s biggest container shipping company Maersk-Sealand, a shipyard in Denmark, and holds the rights for oil and gas exploration in Denmark’s North Sea continental shelf. The group also owns retail chains in Denmark, Germany and Poland.