OMV, Adnoc Plan to Sign $1.5 Billion Oil Agreement in Late April

(Bloomberg) -- Austrian oil producer OMV AG and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. plan to sign a $1.5 billion partnership deal by the end of this month to produce crude from two offshore fields in the Persian Gulf.

The agreement is for a 20 percent interest in the concession for the offshore oil fields Satah Al Razboot and Umm Lulu, OMV said in a statement on Thursday. Adnoc, which produces almost all of the United Arab Emirates’s oil, has been awarding new concessions to foreign investors to gain access to technology and finance and to secure markets for its crude.

OMV, which has increased cooperation with Russia’s Gazprom PJSC in recent years, is starting to look beyond Russia to “balance out our portfolio,” Chief Executive Officer Rainer Seele said in an interview earlier this year.

OMV, whose second-largest shareholder is Abu Dhabi’s state-run investment company Mubadala, would be the second firm with links to the sheikdom to win a stake in the new concessions. Austria owns 31.5 percent of OMV.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthias Wabl in Vienna at mwabl@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edith Moy at echan10@bloomberg.net, Dylan Griffiths, Jonathan Tirone

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