Saga Petroleum

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Saga Petroleum ASA

Type	Public
Founded	1972
Headquarters	Bærum, Norway
Industry	Petroleum
Employees	1300 (1999)
Website	http://www.saga.no/

Saga Petroleum was a Norwegian upstream petroleum company established in 1972 that was acquired by Norsk Hydro in 1999. The company was the only fully-private oil company in Norway. It had partial ownership in 60 oil field licences and is operator of 18.^[1] Saga had an international profile, including major operations on the British continental shelf as well as minor operations in Angola, Indonesia, Libya and Namibia.^[2].

[edit] History

Saga Petroleum was founded in 1972 as a private initiative based on a political wish to have three Norwegian oil companies. The company started up at the same time as Statoil and was part of the three-company model with one state owned company (Statoil), one semi-private company (Norsk Hydro) and one fully-private company (Saga). The three Norwegian oil companies were to insure that petroleum competence was established in Norway.

Among the largest fields Saga operated was the Snorre oil field, in addition to Tordi, Varg and Vigdis.^[3] Not long before the merger Saga had acquired the Kuwait based Santa Fe Exploration for USD 1.23 billion.

[edit] Hydro purchase

Though it originally was Elf Aquitaine who tried to pruchase Saga, it ended with Norsk Hydro acquiring the company. The reason for the purchase was the weak financial situation that Saga had become in partially because of the low oil price and partially because of the strategically failed acquisition of Santa Fe and hedgeing of the oil price.^[4] After the merger with Hydro some of the operating responsibilities were transferred to Statoil. After the merger all of the operations in the British sector were sold.