Last checked at 
* Deal gives Statoil $7 bln to fund new expansion
* OMV sees over $500 mln EBIT contribution from deal
* Reduces OMV's exposure to Middle East oil
* OMV gains 320 million barrels of oil equivalents
By Balazs Koranyi and Michael Shields
OSLO/VIENNA, Aug 19 (Reuters) - Norway's Statoil sold stakes in North Sea oil fields to Austria's OMV on Monday, in a $2.65 billion deal giving the former cash todevelop new projects and placing the latter on course to meetambitious output targets.
The deal, which analysts said came at a comfortable premium,gives OMV a foothold in one of Norway's top new developments andunderlines a rebound in North Sea investments driven by newdiscoveries, high oil prices and better recovery technology.
Statoil sold minority stakes in the mature Gullfaks field,the brand new Gudrun development, Chevron's Rosebankfield in the U.K and BP's Schiehallion field for $2.65billion but the actual price will be higher to reflect capitalexpenditure between January 1 and the closing of the deal.
It also agreed optional cooperation in 11 of Statoil'sexploration licences in the Norwegian North Sea, West ofShetland and the Faroe Islands.
"This is a very good price: it's at two times book valuewhile Statoil itself trades at 1.3 times book value," said ABGoil sector analyst John Olaisen. "It shows that Europeans arepositive about the Norwegian Continental Shelf."
The cash - in addition to funds earmarked for projects itwill no longer own - gives Statoil a sizeable budget to fund newprojects, push on with new exploration and appease investorsworried about soaring capital expenditure.
Statoil has been short of cash in recent years as it spendsheavily on the development of new discoveries in places likeBrazil, Norway and Tanzania - arguing that funding thedevelopment risk there will ultimately offer a higher yield.
As a result Statoil's capital expenditure jumped to $19billion this year from $13.7 billion in 2010 and its net cashflow is expected to stay negative until 2015. The company's freecash flow is expected to match its capital expenditure thisyear, forcing it to raise money, in part through divestments, tofund dividends.
"The idea is to use the proceeds to reinvest in high-returnprojects," Statoil Chief Executive Helge Lund said. "It willincrease our financial flexibility in the sense it releases $7billion in future capital expenditure from these assets."
Shares in Statoil rose 0.6 percent on Monday while shares inOMV were down 2.6 percent.
"NICE PRICE"
"This is a very nice price," said Trond Omdal, an oil sectoranalyst with Arctic Securities in Oslo. Using the industrystandard of an 8 or 9 percent discount rate and basing hiscalculation on the weighted cost of capital, he calculated thatthe deal brought a 41 percent or 50 percent premium.
For OMV, in the process of exiting lower-margin downstreamoperations to focus on more lucrative upstream business, thedeal gives that effort, cheered by analysts, a major push.
UBS analysts said the deal was "transformational" for OMVand also highlighted how willing the industry was to pay apremium to access strategic resources in Norway - a stable andsecure free market in the context of an industry increasinglypushed to more hostile investment climates.
Although OMV produced only a fraction of its total outputfrom the Middle East and Caspian region in 2012 - 10 millionbarrels out of a total 111 million - CEO Gerhard Roiss said onMonday the reduction of its exposure to the region was "animportant dimension.. when you see what is happening today." OMVhas assets in Yemen and in Libya, where it suffered a majorproduction outage during that country's conflict.
OMV said it would finance the deal in part from its cashflow and the proceeds from divesting petrol stations in theBalkans, its lubricants business and a stockholding unit, aswell as from existing credit lines. It said it would need nocapital hike or fresh loans for the transaction and forecast thenew assets would contribute more than $500 million a year tooperating profit from 2014, assuming stable oil prices. OMV hasnot given an operating profit target for 2014. Operating profitin 2012 was 3.1 billion euros.
The deal lifts OMV's proven and probable reserves by about320 million barrels of oil equivalents, or about 19 percent, andwill boost production by about 40,000 barrels in 2014 and almost60,000 barrels in 2016.
That is enough to put it well on course to meet its 2016target of lifting production to around 400,000 barrels a dayfrom 297,000 barrels in the second quarter.
