Since Oct. 1, all Lundin Energy’s employees have been integrated into Aker BP after a large-scale merger, which is meant to result in the oil firm becoming Europe’s leading company within research and production.

On Wednesday morning CEST, Aker BP presented its Q3 financial report, which does not yet include the effects of the merger. Aker BP has nonetheless increased its revenue from USD 1.5bn to USD 4.8bn compared to 2021’s third quarter. A big contributing factor is the high oil and gas prices, which in general have created good conditions for the industry.

This progress is also reflected in the net result of USD 783m against USD 206m last year.

”Third quarter 2022 was the first quarter of the enlarged Aker BP, following the completion of the Lundin transaction at the end of June. During the quarter we have successfully integrated the two organizations. At the same time, we maintained momentum in our operations and project development activities,” says Aker BP CEO Karl Johnny Hersvik in the financial report.

When Aker BP’s acquisition of Lundin was announced at the end of 2021, the deal was valued at NOK 125bn (USD 12bn). Lundin has been based in Sweden but has for many years banked heavily on Norwegian soil.

Huge product lift

Aker BP has already broken its own production record without Lundin, having delivered on average 412,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day during the third quarter. Comparing this to the 2021 third quarter performance of 210,000 daily barrel deliveries, Aker BP has nearly doubled the Q3 result.

The large performances difference is ascribed to the Johan Sverdrup field, which has been scaled up in the meanwhile period.

Aker BP’s Svedrup share was on 161,971 barrels of oil equivalent in Q3 against 63,424 barrels in the same period in 2021.

Hersvik also says that Aker BP is ready to turn several knobs to ramp up production:

”Aker BP has a unique resource base, and over the last couple of years we have been working systematically to mature field development projects with combined resources of around 900 mmboe net to Aker BP. This work is now nearing completion, and we are currently aiming to submit PDOs for these projects by the end of 2022,” the CEO says in the report.

Difficult time to invest

At the same time, Hersvik acknowledges that there are many factors in current times that cannot be ignored before making a final investment decision on a new project:

”The world is characterized by geopolitical instability, inflation and increasing interest rates, supply chain constraints and high volatility in energy and commodity prices,” he says, while mentioning that the Norwegian government has proposed tightening temporary tax rules implemented during the pandemic to get new projects rolling.

AK BP is making ready to pay out USD 0.53 per share in dividends to shareholders based on the recent financial report. After Q3 2021, the share dividend was USD 0.31.

(This article was provided by our sister media, EnergyWatch)

English edit: Kristoffer Grønbæk & Daniel Pedersen

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