Tullow Oil to buy Spring Energy for $372m Tullow Oil is to pay up to $672m to acquire Norwegian explorer Spring Energy as part of a rejig of its assets that will also see it sell off interests in the UK and Dutch sectors of the North Sea. The move by the FTSE 100 company to establish itself as a force in Norwegian waters will see Tullow pay an initial $372m for Spring Energy, which is 88 per cent owned by Stavanger-based private equity group HitecVision. A further $300m may be paid to HitecVision and other Spring investors, including staff, depending on the extent of future exploration success at prospects already identified in Norwegian waters. Spring's interests range across 28 offshore licences in the North, Norwegian and Barents Seas where it partners companies including Statoil, Centrica, Total, ExxonMobil, GDF Suez and BG Group. Aiden Heavey, chief executive at Tullow, described the move alongside its planned disposal of interests in the UK and Dutch sectors of the North Sea by the end of 2013 as "monetising non-core assets and reinvesting the proceeds in high potential oil exploration." The move in part mirrors a push by its fellow FTSE 100 explorer Cairn Energy to re-establish itself in the North Sea this year. In June, Cairn agreed to £414m in cash for North Sea explorer Nautical Petroleum. That deal followed Cairn's purchase for $453m in cash and shares for privately-held Norwegian explorer Agora, which has interests in both the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea. However, Cairn's strategy has been to build a portfolio of cash-generating assets in both the UK and Norwegian sectors of the North Sea to help fund more risky exploration further afield. Tullow's main source of cash flow are fields off Ghana, though the company holds valuable exploration and development positions in Uganda and French Guiana. Tullow's decision to sell on mature gas production assets in the southern North Sea, producing about 18,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, reflects other deals by majors to sell off their interests in the maturing basin. A fortnight ago, BP announced it was raising $1bn through the sale of North Sea oil and gas assets to Taqa, Abu Dhabi's national energy group. In March, BP also announced the sale of its southern North Sea gas assets for $400m to Perenco of France. However, in November Trevor Garlick, BP's regional president North Sea, insisted that BP remained committed to "a focused investment programme in the UK and Norway." Shares in Tullow fell by 74p, or 6 per cent, to £11.82 on Tuesday, a week after suffering a 6 per cent fall after the company announced drilling results off French Guiana had failed to reveal commercial deposits close to its Zaedyus discovery, made last year.