Shell Takes Beryl, SAGE Stakes for $525 Million

The Shell corporation will take Hess Corporation's stake in the prolific Beryl area fields in the UK North Sea as well as Hess's stake in the Scottish Area Gas Evacuation System (SAGE) at a cost of $525 million.

In an announcement made today, Shell said it would take a stake in 12 fields in the Beryl area, including the the Beryl, Nevis Central, Nevis North, Nevis Far North, Nevis South Cormorant, Loirston, Ness and Ness South fields. Following on from the Hess deal, Shell will increase its stake in those fields from 23 per cent to 45 per cent.

Shell will also substantially increase its stake in the Nevis South field from 14.8 per cent to 52.2 per cent as well as newly entering the Nevis West Beryl field with a from 65.5 per cent. The company will also increase its Buckland stake from 14.4 per cent to 28.5 per cent, and from 15.9 per cent to 25 per cent on the Skene field. 

Shell will also take over Hess's 11 per cent stake in the SAGE gas system.

Hess said today that the sale of the assets was all part of a current business plan.

"This sale is part of our strategic portfolio reshaping," President of Worldwide Exploration & Production for Hess, Greg Hill, said. "Including this transaction, we have announced asset sales year-to-date of approximately $2.4 billion."

The acquisition will largely increase Shell's production assets from the Beryl area fields, raising the amount from the current figure of 9,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day to 24,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

Though Shell will have between a  9 to 65 per cent stake in the Beryl fields, Apache remains as operator of the fields.