MOSCOW (MRC) -- China's Sinopec Corp got a major boost in its pursuit of Chevron's South Africa and Botswana assets after South Africa's Competition Tribunal approved, with conditions, the USD900 million transaction, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.
State-owned Sinopec was competing for the assets against commodities trader and miner Glencore, which swooped in last October with a USD973 million bid following delays to Sinopec's original agreement.
The transaction is subject to Sinopec investing 6 billion rand (USD504 million) over five years to develop a refinery in South Africa's Western Cape, over and above Chevron's current investment plans, the Tribunal said in a statement.
The Tribunal also said there should be no retrenchments as a result of the proposed transaction.
As part of the deal, Sinopec will buy a 75 percent share in Chevron's South African subsidiary that runs the 100 Mbpd refinery, a lubricants plant in Durban and 820 petrol stations and other oil storage facilities.
The deal also includes 220 convenience stores across South Africa and Botswana.
As MRC reported earlier, in July 2016, a USD36.8bn expansion of the Tengiz oilfield in Kazakhstan, the largest investment by private sector oil companies this decade, was given the go-ahead by Chevron of the US, bucking the trend of delays and cancellations resulting from the slump in crude prices since mid-2014.
Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation. One of the successor companies of Standard Oil, it is headquartered in San Ramon, California, and active in more than 180 countries. Chevron is engaged in every aspect of the oil, natural gas, and geothermal energy industries, including hydrocarbon exploration and production; refining, marketing and transport; chemicals manufacturing and sales; and power generation.
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