About Viaro Energy
Viaro Energy is a UK independent energy company operating across the North Sea, with natural gas and oil interests supporting UK energy security and the energy transition.
Viaro Energy is a UK independent energy company operating across the North Sea, with natural gas and oil interests supporting UK energy security and the energy transition.
While many oil and gas companies want to operate the fields they own‚ Viaro Energy mostly doesn't want to do so․ That's the key to understanding how the company that was established in 2020 grew so quickly, with working interests in more than 60 fields across the UK Continental Shelf and Dutch North Sea in around 5 years.
The operator handles the day-to-day run of a well‚ deciding when to drill‚ how and when to operate safely‚ and when to shut it down or expand production. Non-operators only own a share of the economics. They receive a share of the revenue but also incur a share of the costs. The London-based Viaro Energy’s model is predominantly of the second type, where it buys into joint ventures where another company does most of the operational work while Viaro Energy takes its share of production.
Why build a company this way? For speed and capital efficiency‚ mostly. Operating a North Sea field needs specialist technical staff and years of institutional knowledge. By contrast, becoming a non-operator needs just capital and the judgment to know which stakes are undervalued. Judgement and independent thinking are the forte of Francesco Mazzagatti, the founder and CEO of Viaro Energy, which was set up in February 2020 and which became operational in September 2020, with the acquisition of RockRose Energy.
Viaro Energy's deals have included company purchases‚ such as RockRose and Spark‚ a licence-interest deal with Hartshead‚ and a 2021 gas portfolio from SSE‚ where a large producer divested its interests in mature fields it no longer wanted to operate. The SSE deal gives some idea of Mazzagatti’s approach to value. A field may become less of a priority for its owner far earlier than it becomes economically unviable. The field is small enough that a large company does not view it as worthwhile. But a smaller independent buyer can still find value.
Gas is clearly the main focus of Mazzagatti’s Viaro Energy‚ accounting as it does for more than 70% of its portfolio. Viaro Energy sees gas as the transition fuel, that is, gas is something that closes the divide between a hydrocarbon-dependent present and a lower-carbon future. In recent years, Viaro Energy has accounted for 9% of UK gas production on a gross basis.