On 20 May 2020 NEO Energy, backed by private equity firm â HitecVision, announced that due to the recent market volatility it and Total have renegotiated the financial terms of a deal to respond to the current industry environment. Previous deal partner Petrogas, from the deal announced back in July 2019, is no longer part of the transaction. Through the deal NEO will acquire interest in a portfolio of assets across four producing areas in the UK North Sea which had an average production of 23,000 boe/d. The acquired assets add approx. 51 MMboe to NEO Energy with potential development upside on a number of projects. It is expected that 80 employees and contractors will move over to NEO and its expected that the deal will complete in Q3 2020.  The original deal, announced on 10 July 2019, saw Petrogas NEO UK Ltd agree to acquire a package of assets for a consideration of USD 635 million. A number of the assets involved in the acquisition were acquired by Total through the USD 7.45 billion acquisition of Maersk made in March 2018. Total stated the acquisition was in-line with its portfolio management strategy, aiming to lower its break-even point through optimizing capital allocation and divesting in high technical cost assets. Totalâs primary objective is to maintain the organic break-even before dividend below USD 30/b.           Assets   acquired              Field         Interest sold         Operator             Dumbarton         100%         TOTAL             Balloch         100%             Lochranza         100%             Drumtochty         100%             Flyndre         65.94%             Affleck         66.67%             Cawdor         60.60%             Golden Eagle         31.56%         CNOOC             Scott         5.16%             Telford         2.36%
HitecVision-owned NEO Energy has agreed to purchase 10 producing North Sea fields from Total, after previous joint venture (JV) partner Petrogas withdrew from the proposed deal. HitecVision announced on 20 May 2020 that it has renegotiated the transaction terms to reflect current market conditions.