Malta oil driller Heritage in €1.4bn takeover talk

The Abu Dhabi-based suitor, whose name was not known, recently sent Heritage a letter offering to pay 425 pence per share.

Heritage found gas but not oil in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Heritage has had a pretty bad run since the announcement that the Miran West field is gas rather than oil, industry observers were quoted by Reuters as saying.

In March 2008, Libya issued a formal letter warning Heritage Oil Company Ltd – which had been contracted by Malta three months earlier  to undertake oil exploration in the region – to desist from any activity in an area that the Great Libyan Arab Socialist Jamahiriya considered part of its territory.

Malta also claims part of the same continental shelf as its own – in particular, an 8,000 square metre stretch designated as ‘Area 7’ – but the Foreign Ministry stopped short of formally protesting when the Libyan government issued a concession to Sirte Oil Company Ltd to carry out oil exploration in the area.

A concession map published by Libya’s National Oil Corporation in 2007 clearly indicates that the area ceded to Sirte Oil Co. under this agreement covers the same territory for which Malta had granted a concession to Heritage Oil.

But while Heritage Oil has yet to start its operations on account of threats of legal action by Libya, Sirte’s operations are already under way.