China’s rush to secure MiddleEastern and African energy supplies intensified as Sinopec, its state-controlled oil refiner, sealed a £4.4 billion takeover of the British-listed Addax Petroleum.

Sinopec’s offer of C$52.80 (£28) per share for Addax, a Swiss-based company listed in Toronto and London, will give the Chinese group access to producing oilfields in northern Iraq, Nigeria and Gabon.

The offer was 16 per cent above Addax’s closing share price on Tuesday and appeared to have beaten off stiff competition for the group from Korea National Oil Company (KNOC). The deal includes a break fee of C$300 million, Addax said in a statement.

With 538 million barrels of proven and probable oil reserves, Addax produced an average of 134,700 barrels of crude oil a day in the first quarter of 2009.

Founded in 1994, it started as a largely Africa-focused oil company, but in 2005 became one of the first businesses to win a drilling licence in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq, which is governed by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Erbil.

Addax now holds a 45 per cent stake in the Taq Taq oilfield, which is capable of producing 44,000 barrels of oil a day.

The company holds an additional stake in the Sangaw North block in the same region of Iraq.

“We are pleased that Sinopec has recognised the highly attractive asset portfolio and exceptional team that we have assembled at Addax Petroleum,” Jean Claude Gandur, the president and chief executive of Addax, said.

The takeover of the company, which employs 864 people, is the latest in a flurry of deals in the oil and gas sector. The London-listed Heritage Oil combined with Genel Energy, of Turkey, this month in a £3.7 billion merger designed to create an Iraq-focused oil explorer. Another state-owned firm, Emirates National Oil Company, is considering a takeover of Dragon Oil, which has operations in the Caspian Sea.

Sinopec’s takeover of Addax is one of the biggest offshore acquisitions by a Chinese oil company. It reflects the country’s growing drive to bolster its access to natural resources to feed its growing economy.

Sinopec, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) are among the companies to have qualified to bid in Iraq’s first oil-licensing round next week. With 115 billion barrels proven, Iraq has the world’s third-largest reserves, after Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Chinese interest in the international oil industry has also extended closer to home. It emerged this week that PetroChina, a division of CNPC, was considering a bid for part of the Grangemouth oil refinery on the Firth of Forth in Scotland, which processes much of the crude produced from the North Sea.

Sinopec is one of China’s biggest oil-refining companies.

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