Cairn alluded to 'industry interest' in their conf call to a...

Cairn alluded to 'industry interest' in their conf call to a question from an Analyst from RBC. Wont surprise me if they dropped Equity in Senegal as the project gets closer to completion of FEED & then FID when it's derisked.

If u look across their North Sea Assets they tend to retain sustainable amount of Equity, rather then beefup & pay high Capex outlays before first Oil, eg: Kraken & Catcher fields that r producing now & have SNE & Nova next cab off the ranks.

Till Dec 2017, their Senegal asset Book value was USD 434.5 mil. Add USD 30 mil which is their Capex guidance for SNE's pre-FEED & FEED study for 2018. So overall value should b roughly USD 464.5 mil.

Add some Premium to that & work out a price for 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% slabs accordingly.
Eg: Conoco's book value till Sept 2016 was USD285mil & they got USD440mil for their 35% in 2016.

BP at Tortue field took out Timis Petro's equity & actively engaged with both Mauritania & Senegal to come up with a Unitisation as the field straddles the Boundary between the 2 nations so they have to get the house in order now, rather then run back & forth at ITLOS with a maritime dispute. They r also free carrying Kosmos for USD916mil plus more on liquids production.

Should they buy CNE's portion with some sort of free carry then they get themselves a new West African Footprint which sort of makes up for missing out on Mozambique & a late entry for 10% of 30 Tcf gas in Zohr.