Texaco Inc. on Tuesday took a 20 percent stake in an oil and natural-gas field in Kazakstan being developed by Italy’s
ENI SpA and Britain’s BG PLC, a move that could expand Texaco’s reserves by about a fifth.
Terms of the transaction, which Texaco said won’t produce significant returns until after 2000, were withheld.
Estimates of how much the companies will have to invest in the project range to $10 billion, though Texaco said it expects the figure will be about $6 billion.
It was Texaco’s second big acquisition in two days. On Monday, it agreed to buy Monterey Resources Inc. for $1.4 billion, a move that the company said could add 385 million barrels of proven reserves.
“Within a period of 48 hours, Texaco has acquired the potential to put well over a billion barrels of reserves on its books,” said Eugene Nowak, an analyst with ABN AMRO Chicago Corp.
Texaco said the field could be its largest single source of reserves, adding the equivalent of about 700 million barrels of oil to its holdings.
The Kazakstan project gives Texaco a source of profits that could last for decades, if it can overcome the political difficulties and risks of operating in former Soviet republics.
The Karachaganak field poses sticky political problems because much of its worth is in its natural-gas reserves.
