Norway's National Oil Champion
Norway slaloms back and forth between treating its oil industry as a branch of state and as private market-listed companies. On Dec. 18, it made another big turn when Statoil (STO), the government-controlled but publicly listed oil company, announced that it would buy the oil and gas assets of the smaller Norsk Hydro (NHY) for about $30 billion. The deal represents an effort to create a major-league oil and gas national champion that is capable of competing against ExxonMobil (XOM) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A) in the international arena. The new company would have production of about 1.9 million barrels per day of oil equivalent, or about half that of Exxon or BP (BP).
The Norwegians get high marks in offshore technology and say that the combined company would be the largest global offshore operator. It would have 6.3 billion barrels of proven reserves.
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