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Weekly news recap: Tullow Oil, Petrofac, Scottish & Southern Energy, Vedanta, GlaxoSmithKline, Amec

Published: 00:38 03 Apr 2010 AEDT

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Tullow Oil (TLW) announced that the Likonde-1 well, located onshore in the Lindi Block in the Ruvuma Basin of Southern Tanzania, has encountered thick sands with hydrocarbon shows.

Scottish and Southern Energy (LSE: SSE), through its wholly-owned Exploration and Production unit, has agreed to acquire natural gas assets and infrastructure from Hess Ltd for US$423 million in cash. Through the transaction SSE will acquire around 383bn cubic feet (bcf) or 64m barrels of oil equivalent (mmboe).

International oil & gas facilities service provider Petrofac (LSE: PFC) said it has acquired metering services and systems specialist Stephen Gillespie Consultants Ltd (SGC) for an initial cash consideration of 2.1 million, with up to 1.4 million in performance-based payments over two years.

Vedanta Resources (LSE: VED) has announced an increased in its share repurchase programme from US$500 million to US$825 million after buying back 21.1 million shares for US$430 million, aiming to enhance its shareholder value.

London and New York pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK, LSE:GSK) has been continually seeking new partnerships while also regularly restricting its own operations in an attempt to maximise its drug development pipeline while keeping research and development costs in check. This week Glaxo announced a new strategic alliance with US listed Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ISIS) to jointly develop new therapies using Isis’ antisense drug delivery platform. The alliance will focus on potential candidates for rare and serious disease, including conditions that cause blindness and infectious diseases.

International engineering and project management firm, AMEC (LSE: AMEC) has announced its acquisition of Newcastle-based environmental engineering consultancy Entec for an initial cash payment of£61.2 million. The FTSE100 constituent bought the Entec from investment company Growth Capital Partners on a cash free/debt free basis and further payments may be made, subject to Entec’s performance.

BHP Billiton (LSE: BLT, ASX: BHP) has moved away from the traditional annually priced iron ore contracts in favour of a shorter-term pricing system. The international mining giant announced that it has reached agreements to switch to the new system with a significant number of its customers throughout Asia. According to BHP, the structural change is consistent with its goal of achieving market clearing prices.

Australian Strategic Materials signs US$600 million LoI

Rowena Smith, CEO and managing director of Australian Strategic Materials Ltd (ASX:ASM, OTC:ASMMF), joins Jonathan Jackson in the Proactive studio to discuss the company’ s Dubbo Project, in Central West New South Wales. This project aims to extract and process critical minerals and rare earth...

5 hours, 29 minutes ago