Serica Energy has acquired the North Sea assets of Prax as 125 employees of the failed group’s Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire were laid off.
Serica has struck a $25.6 million deal to buy Prax Upstream from the administrators handling the collapse of Prax, as well as further operations that Prax had agreed to buy from TotalEnergies and One-Dyas.
The deal was announced as the official receiver said 125 of the 380 employees at the Lindsey refinery would be made redundant at the end of October.
Lindsey collapsed into insolvency at the end of June and has since ceased operations, despite Scottish nationalists claiming that it had been bailed out by the UK government.
The Insolvency Service is investigating “the conduct of the company and its directors” and is working with administrators from FTI to try to sell the site.
Winston Soosaipillai and his wife Arani built Prax Group from one petrol station in 1999 to emcompass forecourts and fuel logistics, the Lindsey refinery, which it bought from Total in 2020, and a North Sea business it acquired through the £250 million takeover of Hurricane Energy in 2023. The whereabouts of the Soosaipillais is unknown.
Unite, the union, claims there “are at least two bids to buy and operate the site as a going concern keeping a full workforce” but said it believed the preferred bidder “wishes to mothball the site and use it as a storage terminal for oil tankers”.
Martin Copeland, Serica’s chief financial officer, said: “Operating refineries in the UK or in western Europe is a very, very difficult business today.
“There were a lot of costs being layered onto them,” he said. “We essentially have been able to slightly take advantage of that situation and get what we consider to be a very attractive acquisition.”
The acquisition includes the Lancaster field, which Prax acquired through the Hurricane deal, and other interests in the Greater Laggan Area, the Catcher Field and the Golden Eagle Area Development.
The Greater Laggan Area stake includes operatorship of the Shetland Gas plant, the newest onshore gas processing facility in the UK.
Aim-quoted Serica’s shares closed up 25.25p, or 14.6%, at 197.5p.
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