Total Sells North Sea Gas Pipelines

The Stockton-based firm has signed an agreement with North Sea Midstream Partners to operate and maintain the St Fergus Gas Terminal and associated Frigg UK and the Shetland Island Regional Gas Export System (SIRGE) offshore pipelines which link the Aberdeenshire facility with the North Sea.

North Sea Midstream Partners will also acquire 100% interests in the Frigg UK pipeline (FUKA) and St. Fergus gas terminal, as part of the deal.

Engineering giant Amec Foster Wheeler, which has a large part of its business in the oil and gas sector, reported a 12 per cent fall in first-half pre-tax profit to £73m, largely due to a one off asbestos-related cost and the merger charges from last year’s £1.9bn takeover of Foster Wheeler.

The St. Fergus Gas Terminal is a three-train processing plant with a capacity to process 2,648 million cubic feet of gas per day.

Industrial infrastructure manager px Group has secured a long term contract to manage a North Sea gas terminal in Scotland.

But the sale should not be misinterpreted as a vote of no-confidence in the North Sea, he said. Production at Frigg stopped in 2004 and decommissioning work was completed five years ago, but the pipeline is still operational, delivering gas from some 20 fields in the northern North Sea to St Fergus. Total again has a 100% operated interest.

“The sale of these midstream transportation assets is another example of Total’s strategy of active portfolio management and the strong potential to unlock value from a range of infrastructure assets”, Total’s CFO Patrick de La Chevardiere said in a statement. Total holds a 67% operated interest in the SIRGE pipeline alongside Dong E&P (UK) Ltd. (18.3%), Chevron North Sea Ltd. (7.2%) and OMV (UK) Ltd. (7.5%).

The sale, to infrastructure firm North Sea Midstream Partners (NSMP), also includes the group’s interests in two gas pipelines and comes less than a month after it reduced its stake in a raft of Shetland gas projects. The start-up of its third hub in British waters, the Laggan-Tormore project in the Shetlands, is expected later this year.