Marathon Oil and Rockrose close sale

Marathon Oil Corp. said Monday the company has closed on the sale of its U.K. business, which consists of the Brae area fields and Foinaven, to UK independent producer RockRose Energy PLC for $95 million.

With the sale, Marathon exits the UK.

"I am delighted to confirm the completion of our Marathon acquisition. The quality of the assets and team materially strengthens Rockrose, with a significant uplift in our reserves and production and marks a significant step towards our strategic ambition of having operations of scale in the North Sea,” said Andrew Austin, executive chairman of RockRose.

Final terms of the deal includes the assumption by the buyer of the UK business' working capital and cash-equivalent balances of roughly $345 million on Dec. 31, 2018. The transaction has an effective date of Jan. 1, 2019.

At year-end 2018, the company carried 21.4 million barrels of oil-equivalent (Mmboe) of proved reserves in the UK, and 2018 production averaged roughly 13,000 barrels of oil-equivalent per day Boe/d).