LONDON: Sam Laidlaw, former Centrica Plc chief, and private equity’s Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners plan $5 billion of oil and gas investments to benefit from asset sales by industry giants in the wake of slumping crude prices.
Neptune Oil & Gas Ltd, set up by the partners, will seek deals in the North Sea, North Africa and Southeast Asia.
“Neptune intends to create a mid-size exploration and production company in the 75,000 to 100,000 barrels-a-day range,” Laidlaw, the quarter-century industry veteran who in running the UK’s biggest utility became one of the nation’s best-known energy executives, said in an interview on Tuesday.
The new company joins a rush to raise money for energy acquisitions after oil prices plunged to about $60 a barrel from more than $100 a year ago. The top four private-equity groups, Carlyle, Apollo Global Management LP, Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co, have raised at least $30 billion for deals in the past 18 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
