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ExxonMobil Corp to pay $4B for Ghana oil field from Kosmos Energy of Dallas

By Caroline Mittermair for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:October 7, 2009

U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil Corp (XOM) has bought Dallas’ Kosmos Energy LLC’s stake in oil blocks offshore the West African country of Ghana.

The deal marks the first entry by one of the world’s major oil companies into what is proving to be a significant new oil province and may pave the way for further acquisitions. Shares in Kosmos’ partners in the blocks – Tullow Oil PLC (TLW.LN) and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (APC) – both saw significant gains as the market priced in possible takeovers, analysts said.

At 1428 GMT Tullow was up 7.6%, or 85 pence, at 1200 pence and Anadarko was up 4.8%, or $2.97 at $64.62.

The person did not give the value of the deal. Analysts at Morgan Stanley put a value of $3.3 billion to $5 billion on Kosmos’ stake in the blocks.

ExxonMobil declined to comment. Kosmos was not immediately available to comment.

The Kosmos blocks contain the Jubilee field, which is operated by Tullow and is estimated to hold between 1.2 billion and 1.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent. A separate discovery offshore Sierra Leone last month by Anadarko, at the western extreme of the same geological formation that contains Jubilee, signaled the potential for further multi-billion barrel discoveries stretching eastward for 1,100 kilometers through the waters of the Ivory Coast and Liberia, wsj reported.

osmos owns less than 25 percent of the Jubilee field. Other owners include: Anadarko Petroleum Corp., Sabre Oil & Gas, EO Group and Ghana National Petroleum Corp.

The partners, together, have spent $3.2 billion to develop the field, with Kosmos contributing about a quarter of that amount.

Jubilee, which was discovered in June 2007, may hold 1.8 billion barrels of oil and will produce 120,000 barrels of crude a day, according to London-based Tullow Oil PLC, project operator and another owner of Jubilee.

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