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DUBAI, Dec 17 (Reuters) - BP became the secondWestern oil major to renew a 40-year onshore concession in AbuDhabi on Saturday after almost two years of negotiations toimprove terms to help operate the United Arab Emirates' biggestoilfields.
The British oil company signed an agreement with state-runAbu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) giving it a 10 percentstake in the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Petroleum Operations(ADCO), which operates the concession.
"BP becomes a 10 percent shareholder in ADCO," ADNOC said ina statement. "The agreement includes BP becoming asset leaderfor the Bab asset group within the concession."
The ADCO concession, including the Bab, Bu Hasa, Shah andAsab fields, has total resources of between 20-30 billionbarrels of oil equivalent over the term of the concession. Thefields produce 1.6 million barrels per day (bpd) and areexpected to reach 1.8 million bpd from 2017.
Total was the first oil major to renew theconcession, securing a 10 percent stake in January last year andputting its peers under pressure to improve terms after ADNOCsaid the French company made the best offer.
Asian and other Western oil firms also bid for stakes aftera deal with major oil companies in the concession first grantedin the 1970s expired in January 2014.
Total and BP had both held 9.5 percent equity stakes in theADCO concession since the 1970s. Shell and Exxon were also partners in the old concession.
Since then other Asian energy companies were granted smallerstakes. INPEX Corporation of Japan, and GS Energy ofSouth Korea received 5 percent and 3 percent stakesrespectively.
ADNOC said it "continues to look for partners to take up theremaining 12 percent stake of the 40 percent earmarked forforeign partners."
As part of the deal, BP said it would issue 392,920,353 ofnew ordinary shares to be held on behalf of Abu Dhabi'sgovernment at a price of 4.47 pounds ($5.58) per ordinary share.
This represents approximately 2 percent of BP's issued sharecapital, excluding treasury shares.($1 = 0.8004 pounds) (Reporting by Rania El Gamal and Dmitry Zhdannikov; Writing bySami Aboudi; Editing by Jason Neely and Helen Popper)