Tullow Oil, the Irish-founded oil explorer, saw its shares slide as much as 12.8 per cent on Wednesday after military officers in Gabon declared a coup in the country on the west coast of central Africa, where the company has interests in a number of onshore and offshore fields.
However, a spokeswoman for Tullow said that the company’s operations in Gabon “are currently unaffected by the ongoing political activity and production continues as normal”.
“Tullow will continue to monitor the situation closely and will work with the operators of our fields as necessary,” she said.
Gabon is the biggest so-called non-operated contributor to Tullow’s oil production, where various partners, including Anglo-French oil and gas group Perenco and Paris-listed Maurel & Prom, are the operators of the fields.
Tullow’s working interest in production from the mainly offshore portfolio averaged 14,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day last year. Gabon accounted for £477 million (€555.4 million) of Tullow’s £2.01 billion revenue in 2022 from crude oil sales, according to its latest annual report.
Tullow stuck an asset-swap agreement with Perenco earlier this year to optimise its equity interest in certain key fields in Gabon. More recently, Tullow received approval earlier this month from the government of Gabon for the extension of several licences in the country to 2046.
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Military officers in oil-producing Gabon said on Wednesday they had seized power and had put president Ali Bongo Ondimba under house arrest, stepping in minutes after the African state’s election body announced he had won a third term.
The officers who said they represented the armed forces declared on television that the election results were cancelled, borders were closed and state institutions were dissolved, after a tense vote that was set to extend the Bongo family’s more than half century in power.
Hundreds of people on the streets of the Gabonese capital, Libreville, celebrated the military’s intervention, while France, Gabon’s former colonial ruler which has troops stationed in the African nation, condemned the coup.
Shares in Tullow closed in London down 6.6 per cent, giving the company a market value of £495.6 million.
– Additional reporting, Reuters
