Tuesday 30 July 2013

Centrica buys US Energy Marketing business

Centrica is paying £500million for the US energy marketing branch of oil and energy firm Hess Corporation.

It's the UK firm's second US buy announced in a month which suggests the parent company of British Gas is keen to take a bigger bite of business across the Atlantic.

It claims the purchase will make its subsidiary Direct Energy the largest business to business gas supplier in Eastern US.

Sam Laidlaw, Centrica’s chief executive said the buy will "transform our B2B operations in North America" and create an "unique dual fuel business" in the US.

He added: “It marks a significant step towards delivering on our strategy – substantially increasing the scale of our North American downstream business and integrating along the gas value chain – with the aim of doubling the profitability of our North American downstream business over the next 3-5 years.”