Carlyle sells Gabon oil firm to France's Maurel & Prom for $730 million

By Ron Bousso

LONDON (Reuters) - Private equity fund Carlyle Group has agreed to sell its Gabon-focused oil and gas company Assala Energy to French producer Maurel & Prom for $730 million, the companies said on Tuesday.

Carlyle International Energy Partners (CIEP), the fund's non-U.S. energy arm, first invested in Assala in 2017 when it acquired Shell's ageing operations in Gabon for $628 million.

It was one of a number of assets Carlyle and other private equity firms acquired from international oil companies after the 2014 oil price downturn, aiming to boost returns by tightly controlling spending and operations.

Assala's sale comes only two months after Carlyle and its partners agreed to sell North Sea-focused Neptune Energy for $4.9 billion to Italian energy company Eni and its Norwegian unit Vaar.

The two transactions highlight companies' renewed interest in expanding oil and gas operations after energy prices soared following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"We're in a cycle now where this transaction, and our sale of Neptune, represent a shift in the macro environment whereby strategic owners are back looking for assets," CIEP co-head Bob Maguire told Reuters.

Paris-based Maurel & Prom owns and operates oil and gas assets in Africa, Europe and Latin America, including three licences in Gabon. The company produced an average of 27,406 barrels per day (bpd) in the first six months of 2023.

Maurel & Prom said the deal provides access to the strategic Gamba oil export terminal and a pipeline of organic development opportunities. It expects the deal to close by the first quarter of next year.

EFFICIENCY

Assala has increased its production in the African country by 30% since the 2017 acquisition to 45,000 bpd, and has also increased the size of its oil and gas reserves by 160% through exploration, Carlyle said in a statement.

Its operating costs came down by 40% over the same period after Carlyle invested $1.3 billion in Assala, which went towards new exploration activity, acquisitions and improving operations, CIEP co-head Guido Funes Nova said.

"When we bought the business, it was running at 85% uptime. We brought it up to close to 100%," he said.

Carlyle made "attractive returns" from the Assala investment, Funes Nova said, without providing details.

Reuters reported last October that Carlyle was preparing to launch the sale of Assala.

(This story has been refiled to reinstate the dropped word 'of' in paragraph 6)

(Reporting by Ron Bousso, additional reporting by Shadia Nasralla)