Statoil will retain a 5 percent stake in Gassled, the owner of gas pipelines and processing facilities on the Norwegian shelf, which last year piped about 100 billion cubic meters of gas to Britain, Germany, Belgium and France.

That amounts to some 16-17 percent of European Union annual gas consumption and is second in size only to Russian imports.

Last year ExxonMobil sold its 8-percent Gassled stake to an infrastructure fund as oil firms shed non-core assets and allow financial investors to tap into the steady margins of the European energy infrastructure business.

The buyer of the stake is Solveig Gas Norway AS, a holding 45 percent owned by Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and 30 percent by Allianz Capital Partners, a subsidiary of Europe's biggest insurer Allianz SE.

The remaining 25 percent is held by Infinity Investments SA, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. The deal still needs approval from Norwegian authorities.

"This transaction contributes to a further streamlining of Statoil's portfolio," Eldar Saetre, Statoil's executive vice president, said in a statement.

"We believe we can use our competence elsewhere with a higher return on our investment," Statoil spokesman Baard Glad Pedersen said, adding that the company's after-tax profit from the deal amounted to 9 billion crowns.

By retaining a stake in Gassled, Statoil will remain "part of the decision-making process", Pedersen said.

Carnegie analyst John Olaisen said the move was "positive" for the company and the price in line with what ExxonMobil received a year ago.

"It is not part of their core business... There is no doubt it does not yield the required return for Statoil," he said.

Statoil shares were up 0.44 percent at 136.9 crowns at 0858 GMT, outpacing a 0.33 percent fall on the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index.
 
Diversification

Industry observers say standard procedure in these types of transactions would be for Solveig's owners to pay for the stake in proportion to their shareholding in the company, so Allianz's share would be some 700 million euros ($1 billion), for example.

Allianz has said it sees energy infrastructure as a good investment because the long lifetime of the asset matches well with the group's long-term insurance liabilities, and because there is no correlation with financial market risks.

The insurer has also invested more than 1 billion euros in renewable energy projects since 2005. The Gassled stake purchase is Allianz Capital Partners' largest transaction in years.

An Allianz spokesman declined to comment on the deal.

The deal comes two years after ExxonMobil, as well as other foreign minority Gassled owners including Total, Shell, ConocoPhillips and Eni, accused the Norwegian government of giving too much sway over Gassled to companies it has influence over.

Until this deal is finalized, more than 70 percent of Gassled remains in the hands of state-owned Petoro and 67-percent state-owned Statoil, which the foreign companies said made it tough for them to have influence over strategic decisions on pipelines and access to new fields.

Norway's gas transport system is operated by Gassco. It consists of 7,975 km of pipelines and two major gas processing plants on the Norwegian coast — Kaarstoe and Kollsnes.

Last year Gassco, fully owned by Gassled, earned 27.24 billion crowns ($4.93 billion) in gross tariffs. It spent a total of 10 billion on its operations, investments and other "major projects", according to its website.

Morgan Stanley advised Statoil on the transaction and Bank of America-Merrill Lynch advised the buyers.