By Alban Kacher
PARIS (Reuters) -TotalEnergies on Wednesday said it agreed to sell its interests in several mature oil fields off Norway, the latest step in a broader divestment strategy aimed at cutting debt.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, the French oil major said.
The company is seeking to focus on more profitable assets in order to reduce its leverage.
During TotalEnergies’ investor day on Monday, group CEO Patrick Pouyanne mentioned “a small divestment in Norway of a mature asset”.
Pouyanne said the group intended to raise $3.5 billion through divestitures by the end of the year to offset more than $3 billion in acquisitions that have led to a more than doubling of TotalEnergies’ debt in the first six months of 2025.
The asset is being acquired by Norway’s Vaar Energi, which will increase its stake in the Ekofisk redevelopment project to 52.3%, Vaar said in a statement.
The project will prolong the operational life of the Ekofisk project, leading to a substantial increase in recoverable resources, Vaar said.
“The transaction will add estimated net proved plus probable reserves of 38 million barrels of oil equivalent with low operating costs per barrel and potential for further growth,” it said.
(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta in Paris, Alban Kacher in Gdansk and Terje Solsvik in Oslo; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Tom Hogue and Thomas Derpinghaus.)
