Schlumberger recalls bid to acquire stake in Eurasia Drilling Co

MOSCOW, Feb 4 (PRIME) -- U.S. oilfield servicing giant Schlumberger has recalled its bid to acquire a stake in Russia’s Eurasia Drilling Company (EDC), Deputy Director of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Andrei Tsyganov told reporters on Monday.

“Today Schlumberger filed an official request to the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia asking it to recall the bid for acquisition of a stake in Eurasia Drilling Company,” he said.

In July 2017, EDC’s shareholders approved the sale of a 51% stake in the company to Schlumberger. In November, the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s Deputy Director Andrei Tsyganov said that the service and Schlumberger were working on a mechanism to protect the company’s investment in EDC and Russian economic interests in case of new Western sanctions.

The Russian government’s commission for foreign investment control preliminarily approved Schlumberger’s bid to acquire between 25% plus one share and 49% in EDC in April 2018.

In October, the Federal Antimonopoly Service said that Schlumberger offered to transfer part of its technologies to Russia as a step to approval of the deal. In December, the government commission still failed to approve the deal, as a list of technologies to be transferred had yet to be specified.

But in January 2018, Bloomberg reported citing Schlumberger CEO Paal Kibsgaard that Schlumberger would drop the attempt to acquire the stake, if it does not receive approval from the Russian government within several weeks.

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