OMV, an integrated, international oil and gas company headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and its joint venture partner Mubadala have agreed on the contract terms for the potential acquisition of an additional 39 percent share in Borealis by OMV, the company announced today.
The transaction will increase OMV's stake from 36 to 75 percent in Borealis, while Mubadala will reduce its stake to 25 percent.
“In the long run, beyond 2025, OMV will become one of the biggest hydrogen producers and recycling companies in the world,” predicted OMV CEO Rainer Seele in an interview yesterday with the Kleine Zeitung.
The petroleum and petrochemicals portfolio of Mubadala, a global investment company headquartered in Abu Dhabi includes assets such as Spain's Cepsa, Canada's Nova Chemicals as well as Russia's Gazprom Neft, but is reportedly looking to expand its base in the gas segment of the hydrocarbons value chain.
OMV will acquire the shares for a purchase price of $4.68 billion and will be entitled is entitled to all dividends distributed after December 31, 2019 on these shares.
The deal will be subject to definitive agreement with Mubadala, merger control clearances, and other approvals from the relevant authorities.
According to a statement from OMV, the Supervisory Board of OMV "has not finally deliberated and decided on the potential transaction," although a decision is expected as soon as possible. Signing will only take place following approval of the potential transaction by the Supervisory Board of OMV.
OMV and Borealis are longstanding partners. Their shared industrial site in Schwechat, Austria, is one of the largest integrated plastics production sites in Europe. The OMV Schwechat Refinery operates integrated petrochemical production facilities and supplies Borealis with petrochemical feedstock.
The companies have collaborated on OMV's ReOil innovation project, a chemical recycling technology which uses post-consumer plastic waste and converts this into feedstock for polyolefins, since 2019. The OMV ReOil pilot plant has been fully integrated into the refinery and currently has a processing capacity of up to 100 kilograms per hour, equivalent to 100 liters of synthetic crude. The technology is to reach the industrial scale by 2025.