Energy

Aberdeen-based exploration firm Dana Petroleum has received a £1.87 billion hostile takeover offer from South Korea's state-owned oil company KNOC.

The offer is equivalent to £18 per share—59 per cent above Dana's share price of £11.51 prior to KNOC’s interest first being announced.

Dana’s board rejected approaches from KNOC earlier this month.

Edinburgh-based Melrose Resources has said that the opening of new fields in Bulgaria will boost the company’s production by 7,500 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

The first of two Bulgarian fields—Kavarna—is expected to begin production in September. Kavarna and Kaliakra are both being developed as single well subsea tiebacks to the Melrose-operated Galata field platform. Kaliakra will follow, beginning production in October.

UK-based energy services group Hunting is to buy US electronics company Innova-Extel for $125 million to boost its well construction unit, it has been announced.

London-based Hunting, whose equipment is used in the construction and maintenance of oil and gas wells, is also seeking further purchases in order to transform into a higher margin, higher growth business.

India’s Vedanta Resources has said it will acquire a 51 to 60 per cent stake in Cairn Energy’s Indian unit for between £5.4 billion to £6.1 billion.

The move represents Vedanta's first foray into oil and gas, and will help Edinburgh-based Cairn Energy fund a drilling programme in Greenland.

Cairn India operates the country’s largest onshore oil field, and has a market value of approximately £8.6 billion.

A slowdown in nuclear projects is posing no problem for Lesedi Nuclear Services. The company is successfully drawing on its comprehensive base of resource and skills to further cement its reputation as a well-established and reliable player in all sectors of the energy market, as Andrew Pelis discovers.

The UK’s biggest energy supplier, Centrica, is buying natural gas assets in Canada from Suncor Energy in a deal worth £229 million.

Direct Energy, Centrica's North American unit, will gain 241 billion cubic feet equivalent of natural gas reserves in the Wildcat Hills area of Alberta, increasing its resources by about 60 per cent to 641 billion cubic feet.

Twenty miles north-west of Calgary, the assets consist of 97 producing wells and related infrastructure, as well as 42,000 net acres of undeveloped land.

Germany's Siemens is to build wind turbines to supply as much as 600 megawatts of energy for the Canadian province of Ontario under an agreement reached with Samsung C&T, it has been announced.

As part of the deal, Siemens will set up Ontario's first turbine blade factory. The German company said that the agreement with South Korea’s Samsung and its partner, Pattern Energy, will create 300 ‘green collar’ jobs and an additional 600 construction and indirect service jobs.

The US Department of Energy has finalized a $43 million loan guarantee for a company's flywheel energy storage plant, which is expected to enable greater use of solar and wind power.

Beacon Power Corp., based in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, is building the 20-megawatt plant in Stephentown, New York, about 20 miles east of Albany.

Vermont’s power transmission company, VELCO, is preparing for another phase of development as it migrates to the smart grid. CEO Chris Dutton and VP external affairs Kerrick Johnson talk to Gay Sutton about the challenges of becoming a telecommunications company.

In April this year, longstanding energy expert Chris Dutton was called in from retirement to take over as president and CEO of Vermont Electric Power Company, Inc. (VELCO) to see it through one of the most challenging periods of growth in its 60-year history.