Hundreds of millions in decommissioning costs, field depletion, high taxes and low oil prices have been the highlights of media coverage of the UK’s North Sea oil industry. Yet the news is not all bad: the UK government approved a slew of tax incentives for field operators amid the oil price crash, and a few new discoveries have been made—not to mention, perhaps surprisingly, that quite a few billion dollars in M&A deals have flown into the region. A recent report from Wood Mackenzie notes that the North Sea has in fact become the second-hottest spot for oil investments, after U.S. shale. That’s largely thanks to private equity’s renewed appetite for oil and gas investments: according to the consultancy, there’s a total of US$15 billion in PE capital waiting to be spent on North Sea acquisitions. Already, several sizable deals have been made, including Chrysaor’s acquisition of US$3.8 billion […]

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