Partners Group, the global private markets investment manager, has agreed to acquire 100% of the equity in CapeOmega (“CapeOmega” or “the Company”), a leading offshore infrastructure platform in Norway, on behalf of its clients. The Company is being acquired from private equity investor HitecVision in a transaction that values CapeOmega at around EUR 1.2 billion.
Formed in 2014, CapeOmega provides essential infrastructure for transporting natural gas produced on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (“NCS”). The Company holds significant stakes in some of Norway’s key midstream infrastructure: Gassled, the world’s largest offshore gas transmission system; Nyhamna, one of three key gas processing plants in Norway; and Polarled, a 480km pipeline that runs from the Aasta Hansteen field to Nyhamna. CapeOmega’s midstream investments benefit from high barriers to entry with no competing infrastructure and no pipe-to-pipe competition.
The NCS, which supplies around 27% of Europe’s gas demand,[1] has the largest gas reserves and resources in the North Sea, with only one third of the resources in production. Partners Group will work closely with CapeOmega’s management team, led by CEO Gisle Eriksen, to further expand in offshore infrastructure and related assets, with a focus on greenfield developments and brownfield acquisitions.
Esther Peiner, Managing Director, Private Infrastructure Europe, Partners Group, states: “Natural gas is increasingly adopted as a complementary fuel source to renewables in the context of the retirement of coal-fired and nuclear power plants across Europe, and the NCS is poised to benefit from this demand tailwind. Partners Group welcomes the opportunity to partner with a well-respected and experienced management team to realize the associated infrastructure expansion potential for CapeOmega in one of Europe’s key natural gas supply hubs.”
Partners Group already owns a sizeable portfolio of midstream infrastructure assets on behalf of its clients. The firm’s most recent transactions in this sub-sector include its 2018 investment in Oklahoma, US-based Superior Pipeline Company, a full-service midstream energy company; and its 2016 investment in the construction of Arcanum Infrastructure (previously known as Raven), an ethylene to butene-1 processing facility located in the US state of Texas.
