Delek to receive $980M from Tamar, Dalit sale

Israel’s energy firm Delek has informed it has fulfilled all conditions for the sale of its 9.25% interests in the Tamar and Dalit fields, located in the Mediterranean Sea, offshore Israel.

The company recently said it would sell its stake in the fields to the newly established entity called Tamar Petroleum.

According to the plan released in June, Tamar Petroleum was in July going to offer shares to the public (equity and debentures) that will be registered for trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.

Tamar Petroleum will use the funds raised from the offering to purchase the rights in the fields that are sold by Delek.

Delek is working to sell its stake in the Tamar field, as required by the Israeli authorities, in order to introduce the healthy competition in the country’s gas market, given the fact that Noble Energy and Delek control the only producing gas field there – Tamar – and the giant Leviathan gas field, which is expected to start producing in late 2019.

Under the deal with the Israeli authorities Noble is to reduce it’s interest to 25% – from 36%, with Delek having to sell its entire interest of 31.25% by late 2021.

Delek on Tuesday said it expected to receive $980 million from the sale of 9.25%.

The company plans to use $323 million of the total sum to partly repay four series of debentures issued by its subsidiaries Delek and Avner.

As previously reported, Noble Energy, Inc. last year sold a three percent working interest in the Tamar field to Harel Group, an insurance provider and pension manager in Israel, as part of the agreement with the Israeli authorities to reduce its stake in Tamar to 25 percent. The transaction value of $369 million was based upon a gross pre-tax Tamar valuation of approximately $12 billion.

Announcing the sale to Harel in July last year, Noble said it anticipated the sale of the remaining 7 to 8 percent working interest “over the next 36 months.”