(Bloomberg) -- Eni SpA is in talks with investors to sell a stake in a new carbon capture and storage division it plans to spin off, as the Italian oil and gas major has done with other two units.
The new company has attracted five or six non-binding offers for a “relevant” slice of the subsidiary, which would leave its management in the hands of the energy giant, Chief Transition & Financial Officer Francesco Gattei said in a phone interview.
“We aim to be working with one or two bidders in order to have developments at the beginning of 2025,” said Gattei, who was recently appointed to oversee Eni’s management and evolution of the sustainable mobility, retail gas & power and renewables businesses, as well as its economic and financial strategy.
He declined to give details on the valuation of the business.
Chief Executive Officer Claudio Descalzi has been pursuing a so-called satellite model for the oil company. That includes spinning off divisions and partnering with external investors, with a view to eventually listing them. Eni did that with renewables unit Plenitude and plans the same for biorefining arm Enilive.
Eni’s existing CCS activities comprise the HyNet North West project in the UK, the Ravenna development in Italy and a Dutch project derived from the acquisition of Neptune Energy.
In the UK, the company has also secured local government funding for Liverpool Bay CO2 Transport and Storage — part of the HyNet project — which aims to reduce pollution from industries with high greenhouse gas emissions in northwest England and north Wales.
CCS is one of the oil industry’s favored tools for cleaning up its operations because it offers a way to cut emissions without forcing companies to slash fossil-fuel production. But it’s costly and largely unproven at the vast scale needed to reach net zero.
“Eni has a leading position in Europe, having gained the expertise to build a supply-chain made of a pool of potential emitters, along with company’s exhausted hydrocarbon basins,” Gattei said.
Eni is also looking for clients for industrial businesses — such as steel and glass makers — who can supply the storage facilities with carbon dioxide. “For the merchant-side of the business, Eni can have a role helping hard-to-abate industries reduce their emissions in countries with little or no CO2 storage capacity, like Switzerland, France, Spain and Greece,” Gattei added.
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