Enterprise Oil, the largest independent exploration andproduction company in Europe, apparently couldn’t resist the marketopportunities in the U.S. any longer. The company paid $127.3million last week for all of drilling company R&B Falcon Corp’sE&P interests in the Gulf of Mexico. The transaction covers a50% stake in the Boomvang field about 100 miles south of Galveston,TX, and a major stake in the Gyrafalcon prospect, which is about100 miles offshore Lousisiana in Green Canyon block 20.

For R&B, it’s an opportunity to unload E&P assets at atime when the market is at a high point. R&B’s explorationefforts have been “very successful over the past year and one-half,and the…sale partially unlocks the considerable, unrecognizedvalue we have built there,” said R&B Falcon CEO Paul B. Loyd.

Enterprise’s activities have been focused in three core areas inEurope, including the United Kingdom and Ireland; Norway andDenmark; and Italy. Now the company is turning its sites on theU.S. Gulf, according to Peter Jackson, president and generalmanager of the company’s U.S. operations. The former British Gassubsidiary plans on elevating the Gulf of Mexico to core businessstatus.

“If you have a billion barrels of reserves, you want to gosomewhere and find probably more than 100 million [to establish anew core area],” said Jackson. “We’re getting between 28 and 33million barrels of reserves (about 200-350 Bcf of gas reserves)[with this purchase]. It’s a significant building block.” Boomvanghas reserves between 70-100 million barrels of oil equivalent, 50%of which are natural gas. The field is expected to begin producingin the first half of 2002, using a Spar platform designed for dailyproduction of 30,000 barrels of oil and 200 MMcf/d of gas.

“There have been a great number of opportunities in the Gulf inthe last 18 months but that market seems to be drying up a littlebit because of favorable pricing,” Jackson added. He saidEnterprise intends to maintain its access to four or five”top-notch exploration prospects” to drill each year or toparticipate in each year.

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