Delek Eyes $2.25bn Bond Sale to Finance Leviathan Field
Israel's Delek Drilling intends to raise $2.25bn in an international bond offering in the coming weeks in order to fund further development of the Leviathan gas field, it said on July 27.
The issue will be led by JPMorgan and HSBC Bank and held on the Tel Aviv stock exchange. It will be divided into four series maturing in 2023, 2025, 2027 and 2030. Delek's 45.3% stake in Leviathan will be used as a pledge for the loans.
Leviathan was brought on stream at the end of 2019 and supplies gas to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. It is expected to reach a plateau production rate of 1.2bn ft3/day (around 12.4bn m3/yr) in 2022 under its first phase, which has a budget of $3.6bn. Delek's partners are US firm Noble Energy, due to be bought by Chevron, and Israel's Ratio Oil.
Delek, which is developing several large gas fields in the east Mediterranean's Levant basin, reported a widened loss of $89mn in the fourth quarter, and auditors have attached a "going concern" warning to the company. Its net debt sat at $5.82bn at the end of last year, after it borrowed heavily to fund the $2bn takeover of Chevron's North Sea business last year through its wholly-owned UK subsidiary Ithaca.
