Genel Enerji, Heritage Oil may merge

Bloomberg

Genel Enerji, a unit of businessman Mehmet Emin Karamehmet’s Çukurova Group, may contribute assets to form a larger entity, the newspaper said. The agreement may be announced next week.

Heritage Oil Chief Financial Officer Paul Atherton declined to comment on the report when reached by Bloomberg News at his cell phone. Nobody was available for a comment at Istanbul-based offices of Çukurova and Genel after work hours Friday.

Heritage, a U.K. explorer with a market value of 1.5 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) that operates in Uganda and northern Iraq, said June 3 that it was in preliminary discussions that may lead to a possible merger.

Genel Enerji came into the spotlight last week, as the Turkish company and its foreign partners started extracting oil from two rich fields in Northern Iraq.