{"id":131176,"date":"2025-10-19T01:29:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T01:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131176\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T01:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T01:29:56","slug":"trumps-peace-tour-piles-pressure-on-tullow-oil-as-1-3bn-refinancing-looms-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/131176\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s \u2018peace tour\u2019 piles pressure on Tullow Oil as $1.3bn refinancing looms \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

US president Donald Trump <\/a>and the red caps may not have won over Oslo with their unseemly lobbying for the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>, but his Gaza truce <\/a>and vow to tackle Ukraine <\/a>next have swayed one crowd: oil traders. <\/p>\n

The price of Brent crude oil slid as much as 5.5 per cent this week to $60.18 a barrel \u2013 nearing lows last seen in May and, before that, in early 2021. <\/p>\n

Down 21 per cent so far this year, oil remained under pressure on Friday after the US president said he would hold a second meeting with Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, \u201cwithin two weeks or so\u201d aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

If the upcoming Budapest bilateral succeeds \u2013 after August\u2019s Alaska talks failed to halt Russian aggression \u2013 Trump supporters will surely ramp up pressure on the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Norway in advance of next year\u2019s selection, following the win last week by Venezuelan opposition leader Corina Machado. <\/p>\n

But it also increases the possibility of the Opec+ oil-producing country adding to global oversupply. <\/p>\n

It followed a warning from the International Energy Agency on Wednesday that the world oil market faces a surplus next year of as much as four million barrels a day \u2013 the equivalent of almost 4 per cent of demand \u2013 as Opec+ producers and rivals lift output even as the global economy, and by extension demand, remains weak. <\/p>\n

It all couldn\u2019t come at a worse time for Tullow Oil, the Irish-founded oil explorer, as it faces a make-or-break refinancing of $1.3 billion of debt that falls due in May. Highly indebted companies typically seek to replace maturing borrowings 12-18 months before they fall due to avoid becoming a hostage to their creditors. <\/p>\n

Tullow\u2019s 2026 bonds are changing hands at less than 84 cents on the dollar \u2013 down from almost 96 cents in January \u2013 reflecting concerns in the bond market that investors may not get all their money back. <\/p>\n

\"\"Dublin Bus CEO on recruitment challenges, going electric, and stamping out anti-social behaviour <\/p>\n

Bondholders haven\u2019t been cowering behind their screens. Bloomberg reported last month that a group of them has tapped US investment bank Houlihan Lokey and law firm Weil, Gotshal & Mange, to advise them on their options as the maturity looms. <\/p>\n

Large bondholders now include Astaris Capital Management, Caius Capital, Melqart Asset Management and Tresidor Investment Management \u2013 all opportunistic hedge funds focused on what\u2019s known in industry jargon as \u201cevent-driven credit situations\u201d. They\u2019re not the kind of fellows a company likes to see mopping up its debt on the bond market. <\/p>\n

Founded in the 1980s by ex-Aer Lingus accountant Aidan Heavey, using money from family and friends to revive old Senegalese gasfields, the company came crashing out of the FTSE 100 in 2015. Debt ballooned to $4.8 billion by 2016; Heavey left two years later.<\/p>\n

Since then, the stock has nosedived, hit by failed drilling campaigns, production setbacks, executive churn, large writedowns and cash crunch warnings. Tullow shut down its Dublin office in 2020 and exited the Irish stock market in 2022, although a loyal band of retail investors still holds on.<\/p>\n

A mix of asset sales, deep cost cuts, and surging oil prices helped the company pull off a $1.8 billion debt refinancing in 2021 and start chipping away at its substantial liabilities.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just declining oil prices that are weighing on Tullow, as most of that debt approaches maturity. <\/p>\n

Now focused entirely on its Jubilee and TEN oilfields off the Ghana coast \u2013 after selling its assets in Gabon (raising $300 million) and Kenya (in a deal worth up to $120 million) this year \u2013 Tullow downgraded its 2025 production and free cash flow targets in August following a maintenance shutdown and higher than expected water levels coming out of certain Jubilee wells. <\/p>\n

The company appointed oil industry veteran Ian Perks last month as chief executive \u2013 its fourth in six years. He brings 30 years of experience in oil and gas exploration and production, having held senior roles at big producers such as Anadarko Petroleum and TotalEnergies. He made his immediate focus clear in the announcement: \u201cTo put the company on a long-term sustainable financial footing.\u201d <\/p>\n

The job became harder when Standard & Poor\u2019s (S&P), one of the world\u2019s leading debt ratings agencies, downgraded its stance on Tullow\u2019s creditworthiness by one notch to CCC \u2013 which is eight rungs deep into what\u2019s known as junk status, and 17 levels below AAA \u2013 as risks of a cash crunch rise. <\/p>\n

Ongoing pressure on oil prices heightens \u201crefinancing risk and exposes the creditors to transactions that we could construe as tantamount to default\u201d, said S&P. <\/p>\n

Tullow has been the subject of tie-up talks with three potential partners in the past three years: Edinburgh-based Capricorn Energy, Texas\u2019s Kosmos Energy, and, most recently, Toronto-listed Meren Energy. Each ended up going nowhere. <\/p>\n

The Meren discussions collapsed during the summer against the backdrop of Tullow\u2019s financial difficulties and oil price volatility. Tullow\u2019s market value has been drained to \u00a3150 million \u2013 just a drop in the barrel compared to its almost \u00a315 billion peak in 2012. <\/p>\n

A Tullow spokesman insisted on Friday that the group \u201cis making good progress with plans to refinance its capital structure and is evaluating a range of options\u201d. <\/p>\n

The longer it takes, the more those options narrow. And fewer are likely to involve Tullow remaining a listed entity for much longer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US president Donald Trump and the red caps may not have won over Oslo with their unseemly lobbying…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[989,79,18,19,17,9951,13149,6221,78737],"class_list":{"0":"post-131176","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-bonds","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-oil","14":"tag-opec","15":"tag-trump-presidency","16":"tag-tullow-oil"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}