North Sea's insolvent First Oil Expro dissolves assets

摘要

North Sea independent First Oil Expro is being broken up having been forced into insolvency administration, with the partners in the Kraken heavy oil project taking its stake and private-equity backed Zennor Petroleum taking other assets. The announcement comes with some signs of life in the UK mergers and acquisitions market, following German utility E.ON's sale of assets to Premier Oil in January and Shell's purchase of UK company BG. Industry group Oil and Gas UK has however repeatedly warned of a gloomy outlook, with industry sentiment remaining deeply negative according to a survey it published this month.