Elf Aquitaine News

Höegh LNG announced on Monday that its president and CEO Sveinung J. S. Støhle is resigning to purse a career outside of Norway.The Norwegian shipowner said Støhle gave his resignation notice on October 9 and that he will remain in his role until November 1.Thor Jørgen Guttormsen will act as interim president and CEO effective November 1 and until a permanent successor is appointed.An  LNG industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience in shipping and oil and gas, Støhle has worked for Höegh LNG since 2005. He served as director and chairman of the board of directors of Höegh LNG Partners LP since April 2014 but stepped down as a chairman when assuming the position as CEO of Höegh LNG Partners LP since August 2020.

The Directors to Kvaerner's Board have been elected. From Kvaerner's first day of trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange in July 2011, the Board of Directors will consist of five shareholder-elected members as well as three members elected by Kvaerner's employees. The shareholder-elected members are Kjell Inge Røkke (chairman), Tore Torvund, Bruno Weymuller, Lone Fønss Schrøder and Vibeke Hammer Madsen. The employee-elected members are Rune Rafdal, Ståle Knoff Johansen and Bernt Harald Kilnes. Kjell Inge Røkke is an entrepreneur and industrialist, and has been a driving force in the development of Aker since the 1990s. Mr. Røkke owns 67.8 percent of Aker ASA through The Resource Group TRG AS.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Elf Aquitaine are reportedly moving to develop oil fields in Nigeria using radical new funding schemes the elected government has put under review.

A backlash against older tankers and flags of convenience, triggered by the December sinking of the Erika off the coast of France, achieved a tangible first step last week with the signing of a Ship Safety Charter by oil majors and ship classification firms involved in the French petroleum shipping industry. The parties signing the three-page document, including TotalFina, Elf Aquitaine, BP Amoco France, Royal Dutch/Shell France, Esso France, ship classification firm Bureau Veritas and petroleum industries federation UFIP, agreed not to use single-hulled ships after 2008 and, effective immediately, to only use ships over 15 years old if they have passed recent intensive inspections.

Elf Aquitaine Chairman Philippe Jaffre said he will only enter merger talks with TotalFina if TotalFina agreed to spin off the merged group's chemicals activities into a separate company. Jaffre told France's LC1 television it would be left to Elf and TotalFina shareholders to decide in two months' time between TotalFina's hostile bid for Elf and Elf's counter-bid if the two companies failed to agree on a friendly deal. He said he was "very confident" shareholders would opt for Elf's proposal. TotalFina launched a hostile bid for Elf on July 5 to create the world's fourth largest oil company. Elf responded two weeks later with a counter-bid and said it would spin off the new group's petrochemicals and chemicals businesses into a separately quoted company.

Market fears that the takeover battle between France's two largest oil companies could be prolonged reportedly increased when the market regulator failed to set a closing date for TotalFina's bid for rival Elf Aquitaine.

The takeover battle between Elf Aquitaine and TotalFina has reportedly taken a more hostile tone, pushing back the prospect of friendly merger talks between France's two largest oil companies.

French oil company TotalFina has reportedly agreed a friendly merger deal with Elf Aquitaine, bringing to an end their takeover fight and creating the world's fourth largest oil company. TotalFina Chairman Thierry Desmarest will head the new group. The board will comprise nine Elf directors, nine TotalFina directors and four directors representing the Belgian shareholders within the TotalFina board.

TotalFina Chairman Thierry Desmarest said that relations with rival Elf Aquitaine had entered a more relaxed phase and said he would seek a friendly end to their takeover fight in the coming weeks. "The atmosphere has become more relaxed over the past week," Desmarest said. Desmarest confirmed he was ready to raise his offer if a friendly deal could be reached. "In order to secure a deal, if we want to move more quickly, we need to accept that there is room for discussion," he said. TotalFina launched a 42 billion euro hostile bid for Elf on July 5 and Elf responded with a 50 billion counter-bid two weeks later. Desmarest said that negotiations between the two oil giants had not yet begun.

French oil company Elf Aquitaine has announced its U.S. oil and gas subsidiary Elf Exploration Inc. made its second deep offshore oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico this year. Elf officials said workers made the find at the Matterhorn well in the Mississippi Canyon Block 243, in which Elf Exploration Inc. has a 100 percent working interest. A Global Marine Celtic Sea semi-submersible vessel had drilled the well to a depth of 8,165 ft. and found 370 gross ft. of oil reservoirs in two zones, officials added. "Production tests showed a daily flow rate of 6,640 barrels of good quality oil as well as associated gas." The Matterhorn discovery follows Elf's March find at the Anconcagua prospect in Mississippi Canyon Block 305.

Royal Dutch/Shell plans to spend $1 billion developing the 120,000 bpd shallow water EA field off Nigeria using an innovative funding scheme. "The acreage would be developed with no investment by the government, and the private joint venture partners bearing all of the up front cost," Group Managing Director Phill Watts said. The alternative funding scheme is intended to lift the financial burden of state-run Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation - the biggest shareholder in the joint venture operated by Shell, in which Agip and Elf-Aquitaine also hold stakes. EA Field has reserves of 350 million barrels and is due to come onstream in the second half of 2002, producing 100 million standard cubic feet of gas per day in addition to oil, a Shell official said.

Chevron Corp. is assessing the impact on the development timetable of its North Nemba oilfield off the Angola coast after the sinking of the production platform on route from South Korea. The $175 million dollar structure was being shipped by the vessel Mighty Servant 2 early last week when it capsized near the Indonesian island of Singkep with the loss of four crew members. The so-called topside production platform is 230 ft. long, 105 ft. wide, 150 ft. tall and took 24 months to design and build. The vessel was enroute from the South Korean port of Okpo to Angola, having fueled in Singapore, when it began taking on water and sank. Chevron spokesman Fred Gorrell said the company was fully covered by insurance to replace the platform.

Transport Minister Jean-Claude Gayssot supported a French industry charter to tighten oil tanker safety aimed at making oil spills like the recent Erika disaster a thing of the past. Gayssot said a pact signed by French oil companies, shipowners and charterers showed they were impatient to move immediately to improve safety standards rather than wait for international regulations to be tightened. Signatures on the charter, which followed five hours of negotiations, include officials from TotalFina, Elf Aquitaine, BP Amoco France, Royal Dutch/Shell France, Esso France, ship classification firm Bureau Veritas and petroleum industries federation UFIP.

The chairman of Saga Petroleum abruptly quit on Monday to protest at parliamentary plans to keep Hydro under state control. Wilhelm Wilhelmsen also will reportedly sell the shares he held as a private individual to France’s Elf Aquitaine, which has made a rival takeover offer to Hydro and Statoil

Elf Aquitaine's bid for Norway's Saga Petroleum is reportedly giving Norway's minority government a gigantic headache by threatening its cherished goal of keeping Saga in Norwegian hands.