Northern Petroleum Could Sell Netherlands Operations

Northern Petroleum is considering the sale of its operations in the Netherlands as part of an extensive corporate review of its activities, the firm said Tuesday. The firm also announced that it plans to enter Canada and that it has upgraded its resource estimate at its Cygnus prospect in Italy.

Northern said that in the past year a number expressions of interest have been made to purchase its Netherlands assets and the firm has held negotiations with two parties. One party has made an offer for the Netherlands subsidiary while the other wants to buy both the Netherlands subsidiary and Northern's UK assets.

The company said that it has begun a new light-oil production redevelopment project in northern Alberta, Canada. It has acquired over 5,300 acres with an estimate potential to yield in excess of one million barrels of oil in place. The leased area contains 22 abandoned wells with 11 candidates currently identified as being capable of re-entry for further production.

Meanwhile, Northern said that its Cygnus prospect offshore Italy has now been mapped as an estimated un-risked prospective resource of up to 790 million barrels of recoverable oil within its F.R39.NP permit. The prospect is adjacent to and up-dip of the producing Aquila oil field.

"This project is materially valuable to shareholders and our efforts in Italy have now been concentrated upon this. Discussions are currently progressing with major industry partners to join with Northern to drill the prospect," Northern Managing Director Derek Musgrove said in a company statement.

A former engineer, Jon is an award-winning editor who has covered the technology, engineering and energy sectors since the mid-1990s. Email Jon at jmainwaring@rigzone.com.

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