Calgary’s Trican sells Kazakhstan subsidiary once courted by Rosneft
by The Canadian Press
Trican CEO Dale Dusterhoft says the price was under $10 million, much lower than the $25 million expected by analysts
CALGARY—An oilfield services firm in Vienna is buying a Calgary company’s Kazakhstan branch that was once coveted by mammoth Russian state-controlled Rosneft Oil Co.
Petro Welt Technologies AG says it has completed a deal to take over the Kazakh subsidiary of Trican Well Service of Calgary and that operations will be integrated with its similar business lines.
Trican completed the sale of its Russian well-fracturing or “fracking” business last summer, selling it to a Rosneft subsidiary for the equivalent of $182 million.
The smaller Kazakh branch sale to Rosneft was expected to follow before the end of the year but was delayed and then called off.
Petro Welt did not give a sales figure but Trican CEO Dale Dusterhoft says the price was under $10 million, much lower than $25 million estimated by an RBC analyst in a report.
Dusterhoft says Trican’s Kazakh operations employ about 30 employees in two small fracturing crews. Activity has been muted there because of poor demand linked to low oil prices, he said.
