Premier Oil’s largest creditor, ARCM, has raised new concerns regarding Premier’s proposed acquisition of North Sea assets from BP and Dana Petroleum and called upon Premier to provide full and transparent responses.
BP’s Andrew platform included in the deal with Premier; Image source: BP
Premier in early January proposed to buy the assets through a scheme that would allow it to extend debt maturities. Despite ARCM’s objections , Premier last week got an approval from the court to go ahead with the plan to have its creditors vote to extend debt maturities and buy the North Sea assets.
Upon receiving approval from the court, Premier said it would convene the creditor meetings for the schemes, to be held on February 12, 2020, with the schemes sanction hearing expected to take place in March.
ARCM, Premier’s largest creditor, holding more than 15% across the company’s debt instruments with blocking positions in two of them, on Friday noted Premier Oil’s announcement on the convening of scheme meetings to once again extend debt maturity and to approve the making of acquisitions.
ARCM reiterated that the proposed acquisitions would expose the company and its business to significant incremental risks.
ARCM’s opposition to these proposed acquisitions has to be considered within the context that ARCM has not previously opposed any of the company’s consent requests involving investments since it became a lender to the company in 2016, the creditor said.
Upon a review of Premier’s January 7 presentation, ARCM noted that there were “a number of important details which are unclear yet are critical to enable stakeholders to meaningfully assess the merits of the acquisitions.”
ARCM also said that, over the next few weeks, it would pose a series of questions to the company relating to the acquisitions and called upon Premier to provide full and transparent responses to its stakeholders.
Offshore Energy Today Staff
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