Oxane Materials names Clay Border V.P. of sales

Oxane Materials, a Houston-based marketer and manufacturer of Advanced Ceramic Proppant, has announced the addition of Clay Border as V.P. of sales. In his role, Border will lead Oxane’s sales team, focusing on field performance and return utilizing the company’s proprietary proppant.

Oxane' s patented proppant travels deeper and more uniformly into oil and gas formations, while affording a more conductive channel for flow to the wellbore. As a result, more hydrocarbons are produced at a more rapid rate, relative to wells propped with commodity proppants.

Previously, Border was managing director for Donovan Capital, an energy-focused investment bank that provided merchant bank, advisory and capital raising services to private upstream energy companies. He was also V.P. within the securities division of Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., an energy investment banking and research firm based in Houston. Before entering the securities industry, Border was a technical sales engineer for a division of Emerson Electric and Reliance Electric (acquired by Rockwell Automation).

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

Imperial Oil to sell western Canada assets, focus on oil sands

Imperial Oil Ltd., the Canadian energy company majority owned by Exxon Mobil Corp., agreed to sell some assets to Whitecap Resources Inc. for about C$855 million ($774 million) as it focuses on larger oil-sands projects.

The conventional oil and natural gas assets in British Columbia and Alberta produced the equivalent of about 15,000 bopd in 2013, the Calgary-based company said in a statement today. Half of the production is oil and the other half is gas.

Imperial has focused on expanding its so-called unconventional production, which includes oil sands. The company spent C$12.9 billion to bring the Kearl oil-sands project online last year and joined with Exxon, which owns 70% of its stock, to buy more oil-sands acreage for about C$751 million in August. Kearl and the Cold Lake oil-sands project provide an “incredible platform for growth,” Imperial CEO Rich Kruger said in September.

“For Imperial, I don’t think these assets really move the needle anymore, so it’s a focus on Cold Lake and Kearl, the big projects,” Justin Bouchard, an analyst at Desjardins Securities Inc. in Calgary, said in a phone interview today. “For the guys who bought it, it’s obviously meaningful.”

For Whitecap, also based in Calgary, the acquisition “greatly enhances our sustainable dividend-growth model and is accretive on all key measures both in 2014 and 2015,” the company said in a separate statement. The deal is expected to close in May.

Imperial hired Scotiabank last year to sell the assets. National Bank Financial Inc. has acted as Whitecap’s financial adviser and GMP Securities LP, and TD Securities Inc. were strategic advisers on the purchase.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.

Petrofac rises to 3-month high on $1.2 billion BP deal

Petrofac Ltd. rose to the highest in three months in London trading after the oil-services provider won a $1.2 billion contract from BP Plc in Oman.

Petrofac advanced as much as 4 percent to 1,383 pence, the highest intraday price since Nov 15. It’s up 12 percent in 2014.

BP awarded the engineering, procurement and construction contract for the central processing facility of the Khazzan gas project, London-based Petrofac said today in a statement.

“This contract is very much Petrofac’s bread-and-butter, an onshore gas processing plant in the Middle East,” Investec Bank Plc said in a note.

Separately, Ophir Energy Plc today said it signed a non-binding agreement with Petrofac to help develop a gas project off Equatorial Guinea.

Providing useful resources, articles and writings on crude oil, other petroleum products, energy and gas. By O'Niel Petroserve Nigeria Ltd, online.