UK oil executive starts $5-bn PE group

Sam Laidlaw, former Centrica Plc chief, and private equity's Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners plan $5 billion of oil and gas investments to benefit from asset sales by industry giants in the wake of slumping crude prices.

Neptune Oil & Gas Ltd, set up by the partners, will seek deals in the North Sea, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

"Neptune intends to create a mid-size exploration and production company in the 75,000 to 100,000 barrels-a-day range," Laidlaw, the quarter-century industry veteran who in running the UK's biggest utility became one of the nation's best-known energy executives, said in an interview on Tuesday.
 

The new company joins a rush to raise money for energy acquisitions after oil prices plunged to about $60 a barrel from more than $100 a year ago. The top four private-equity groups, Carlyle, Apollo Global Management LP, Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co, have raised at least $30 billion for deals in the past 18 months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

With the wave of cash helping valuations defy gravity, some investors have yet to find anything to purchase with their recently accumulated war chests.

Neptune would like to "buy a significant portfolio" in only one or two deals, though it might have to wait, Laidlaw said.

"Valuations have yet to reflect the new reality of the oil price," the former Centrica chief executive officer said. It'll take "a while" before the facts sink in, he said.