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France’s Total sells North Sea gas assets

French oil giant Total announced on Thursday it had agreed to sell a North Sea gas terminal and two pipelines in a deal worth over $900 million in a move to help offset falling oil prices.

Published: 27 August 2015 14:12 CEST

France's Total sells North Sea gas assets

Tank trucks at French oil giant Total's La Mede refinery in Chateauneuf-les-Martigues. Photo: Bertrand Langlois/AFP

Total said Britain's North Sea Midstream Partners had agreed to buy the FUKA and SIRGE gas pipelines and the St. Fergus Gas Terminal in Scotland for £585 million ($905 million, €800 million).

The sale is part of Total's effort to sell $10 billion worth of assets between 2015 and 2017, along with reducing new investment and cutting production costs, to compensate for sagging income as oil prices have dropped to their lowest levels since 2009.

The deal announced Thursday follows on the heels of Total's sale last month of stakes in three North Sea gas fields for $873 million, and brings total divestments for the year to $3.5 billion.

“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 chief financial officer Patrick de La Chevardiere said in a statement.

“Transferring ownership to an entity specialising in midstream UK assets creates value for us and ensures a long and bright future for the facilities.”

In recent months, Total has also sold stakes in a refinery in Germany for $300 million and its South Africa coal affiliate for $372 million.

Despite Thursday's sale, Total stressed it remained committed to gas exploration and extraction, including North Sea fields.

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NGOs take Norway to European Court over Arctic oil exploration

Northern Norway. Photo by Vidar Nordli-Mathisen on Unsplash.

It’s the latest turn in a legal tussle between environmental organisations Greenpeace and Young Friends of the Earth Norway on one side and the Norwegian state on the other.

The organisations are demanding the government cancel 10 oil exploration licenses in the Barents Sea awarded in 2016, arguing it was unconstitutional.

Referring to the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the organisations claim that the oil licenses violated article 112 of Norway’s constitution, guaranteeing everyone the right to a healthy environment.”

The six activists, alongside Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth Norway, hope that the European Court of Human Rights will hear their case and find that Norway’s oil expansion is in breach of human rights,” Greenpeace said in a statement.

In December, Norway’s Supreme Court rejected the claim brought by the organisations, their third successive legal defeat.

READ MORE: Norway sees oil in its future despite IEA’s warnings

While most of the judges on the court agreed that article 112 could be invoked if the state failed to meet its climate and environmental obligations– they did not think it was applicable in this case.

The court also held that the granting of oil permits was not contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights, in part because they did not represent “a real and immediate risk” to life and physical integrity.

“The young activists and the environmental organisations argue that this judgment was flawed, as it discounted the significance of their environmental constitutional rights and did not take into account an accurate assessment of the consequences of climate change for the coming generations,” Greenpeace said.

On Friday, the Norwegian government unveiled a white paper on the country’s energy future, which still includes oil exploration despite a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The IEA recently warned that all future fossil fuel projects must be scrapped if the world is to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Norwegian case is an example of a global trend in which climate activists are increasingly turning to courts to pursue their agenda.

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