Enauta keeping Brazilian gas field in its portfolio after all

Oil and gas company Enauta will be keeping its interest in the Manati gas field offshore Brazil as the conditions for the previously announced sale of its interest in the field have not been met.

Enauta revealed on Monday that the conditions precedent required for the completion of the sale of the company’s stake in the Manati field to Gas Bridge had not been fulfilled.

Enauta’s subsidiary, Enauta Energia, entered into an agreement with Gas Bridge for the sale of its 45 per cent stake in the field for R$560 million (about $100 million) in August 2020. Gas Bridge also reached separate agreements with PetroRio and GeoPark to buy their 10 per cent stakes in the Manati field while the operator of the field, Petrobras, also put its stake in the field up for sale in May 2020.

The deal between Enauta and Gas Bridge was subject to a series of commercial and regulatory conditions that should have been fulfilled by 31 December 2021. However, following the expiration of the deadline, Enauta opted not to extend the deadline for fulfillment of the conditions precedent and decided to keep it in its portfolio. Enauta said the asset was important in terms of cash generation, revenue diversification, and improvement of the carbon footprint.

Gas Bridge proposed to enter into negotiations with Enauta for a possible partnership between the companies to implement a natural gas storage project for Manati if it succeeds in acquiring the stakes of other partners in the field. Enauta said it would begin assessing this opportunity due to its interest in maximizing the use and value creation of Manati.

The Petrobras-operated Manati field, located in the Camamu Basin, on the coast of Bahia, is one of Brazil’s largest gas fields. The project includes a fixed production platform, a gas compression station, and a natural gas treatment plant. All of it is connected by a 125km gas pipeline.

Last year, the field experienced technical issues on two different occasions, due to which the production from the field had to be stopped.

The first incident happened in September 2021 due to small gas leakage. Repairs were carried out the and production re-started in October. The second one happened in December 2021, owing to an issue related to the closure of the export pipeline’s subsea valve. The field resumed production later in the month after repairs were carried out.