Cairn buys North Sea firm for £414m

British oil firm Cairn Energy announced this morning that is has bought North Sea firm Nautical Petroleum for £414m.

The offer represents a premium of 51.1 per cent to yesterday’s closing price of 297.8p per share.

Cairn said in March that it would look to spend some of its $1.2 billion cash pile to build up a business which would be producing oil in the near-term. In April is bought privately-held Agora Oil & Gas for $450m (£289m).

Simon Thomson, chief executive of Cairn said: “This acquisition … complements our recent acquisition of Agora to help build a platform in North West Europe.

“Specifically we will increase our equity position in the Catcher area, which contains several oil discoveries and follow-on prospectivity, and acquire a material stake in Kraken, another large, North Sea oil development project.”