KUWAIT, 17 April 2005 — Kuwait Petroleum Corp.’s (KPC) stake in GlobalSantaFe Corp. will drop below 8.5 percent after the sale of a major stake back to the US drilling contractor, KPC said in statement published yesterday.
State-run KPC, which oversees the oil sector in the Gulf Arab state, said it will sell to GlobalSantaFe a total of 23.5 million shares from a total of 43.5 million it owns in the oil and gas drilling contractor. The shares to be purchased from KPC will be retired and there will be no increase in the total number of outstanding GlobalSantaFe shares, the US firm said in a statement earlier this week.