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Exchanges of Business Assets within Investment Activities in the Energy Sector: Key Concepts

by Ms. Irina Mironova - 8 November 2013

Exchanges of Business Assets

Ensuring adequate global energy supply will require significant and timely investment and international cooperation along the entire supply chain. Many national and international energy companies that operate across the borders develop new tactics and strategies to address challenges and to satisfy complex criteria of energy security for both energy consuming and energy producing countries. Exchange of assets is one of the tools that can be used within their tactics. In the last decade, an increasing number of the assets exchange deals (in fields of geology, geo-science, technology development, field development, well drilling, finance, logistics, safety, health, and the environment) has been concluded between the companies in the energy sector, especially with the involvement of the European companies such as Shell (UK / Netherlands), StatoilHydro (Norway), ENI (Italy), Wintershall (Germany), Rosneft (Russia) and Gazprom (Russia).

The paper shows that assets exchange can serve as a mechanism of risk mitigation for (1) investment activities; (2) energy companies internationalisation / globalisation strategies implementation; (3) solving the difficult issues of reciprocity access to market segments.

This paper from the Energy Charter Secretariat Occasional Papers series focuses on the theoretical aspects of asset exchanges and puts them into perspective of portfolio management activities of the companies, as well as national energy security agenda. This paper is part of a larger project "Exchanges of Business Assets within Investment Activities in the Energy Sector", and cases of asset exchanges, as well as region-specific challenges associated with those cases will be made public in a separate paper.

The report "Exchanges of Business Assets within Investment Activities in the Energy Sector: Key Concepts" is available in English.


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The contents of this work are the author's sole responsibility. They do not necessarily represent the views of the Energy Charter Secretariat or any members of the Energy Charter Treaty.