| Industry | Petroleum |
|---|---|
| Fate | Merger |
| Successor | StatoilHydro |
| Founded | 1965 |
| Defunct | 2007 |
| Headquarters | Oslo, Norway |
| Products | Petroleum Natural gas |
| Parent | Norsk Hydro |
Hydro Oil & Gas is a defunct division of Norsk Hydro that operated within the oil and gas industry. On October 1, 2007 it merged with Statoil to form the new corporation StatoilHydro.
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Hydro's main operations in petroleum were on the Norwegian continental shelf, but also operates in Angola, Canada, Russia and Libya. Hydro was the operator of 13 oil fields and had a production of 563,000 barrels of oil equivalents.
Hydro also operated gas stations in Sweden under the brand name Hydro and operates in Norway and Denmark with the name HydroTexaco in joint venture with Chevron. In 2006 there were 460 stations in Norway and 550 in Denmark. Also the brands Uno-X and Rema Bensin were operated by this venture.
In 1965 Hydro joined Elf Aquitaine and six other French companies to form Petronord to perform search for oil and gas in the North Sea. Hydro soon became a large company in the North Sea petroleum industry, and also became operator of a number of fields, the first being Oseberg.
Hydro acquired in the late 1980s the Mobil service stations in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, changing their name to Hydro. In 1995 Hydro merged its stations in Norway and Denmark with the Texaco, creating the joint venture HydroTexaco. The service station chain was sold in 2006 to Reitangruppen and the stations changed name to YX Energi. In 1999 Hydro acquired Norway's third largest petroleum company Saga Petroleum, who had major upstream operations primarily in Norway and the United Kingdom. The British operations were later sold.
The merger proposal with Statoil was announced in December 2006.[1] Under the rules of the EEA the merger was approved by the European Union on May 3, 2007[2] and by the Norwegian Parliament on June 8, 2007.[3] The Norwegian Government, the biggest shareholder in both Statoil and Norsk Hydro, holds 62.5% of the company.[4] Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway commented that he views the merger as "the start of a new era. We are creating a global energy company and strengthening Norway’s oil and gas industry."[5]