Nostrum Oil & Gas reviews business, mulls sale of company

Nostrum Oil & Gas Plc said it started a review of its business, which could include a potential sale of the Kazakhstan-focussed oil firm.

Nostrum, which produces, develops and explores oil and gas in the pre-Caspian Basin, said in a statement it had not yet received any bids for the company.

Other options for the business could include throughput agreements with third party gas suppliers, bolt-on acquisitions in existing and adjacent fields, farming down stakes in some assets to expedite their development, and a corporate deal, Nostrum added.

The company, which has a market value of 105.9 million pounds ($135.16 million), reported full-year revenue of $389.9 million and core earnings of $231.2 million in 2018, both marginally lower than the previous year.

Last year, Nostrum had to work to stabilise production from two of its wells and complete a gas treatment plant in Kazakhstan while working to improve its balance sheet and tightening cost control as it targeted a ramp-up in production.

The company's principal producing asset is the Chinarevskoye field and it is also the operator of the Rostoshinskoye, Darinskoye and Yuzhno-Gremyachenskoye oil and gas fields, located in the pre-Caspian basin to the north-west of Uralsk.

Nostrum also said on Monday it would buy 50% of Positive Invest LLP, the owner of the Stepnoy Leopard licences, securing additional undeveloped, material gas condensate resource.

($1 = 0.7835 pounds) (Reporting by Samantha Machado and Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)

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