InterOil Corp has agreed to sell its Papua New Guinea oil refinery and petroleum products distribution business to Singapore-based Puma Energy Group for $526 million to focus on gas exploration.The move could set up InterOil as a target for major oil and gas companies looking to expand into Papua New Guinea, where ExxonMobil Corp recently started exporting liquefied natural gas from its $19 billion PNG LNG project."It certainly increases the attractiveness of InterOil to potential M&A," said Nik Burns, an analyst at UBS. "We think there is considerable interest in their upstream business."InterOil's main attraction is its 36 percent stake in the Elk and Antelope gas fields in PNG, where it recently brought in France's Total SA as a 40 percent partner and where Oil Search Ltd also recently bought a 23 percent stake.
Total SA is a France-based integrated international oil and gas company. Shares of TOT traded higher by 0.01% or $0.01/share to $72.20. In the past year, the shares have traded as low as $47.69 and as high as $74.22. On average, 1026830 shares of TOT exchange hands on a given day and today's volume is recorded at 505264.
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