Delek, via its North Sea oil and gas operator Ithaca Energy, could reach an agreement within days, two of five sources said.

U.S. oil major Chevron Corp kicked off the sale of its central North Sea oil and gas fields Alba, Alder, Captain, Elgin/Franklin, Erskine and Jade as well as the Britannia platform and its satellites last July, with the help of U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley.

One of the sources said that Delek would pay between $1.8 and $2 billion for the assets, which exclude Chevron's 19.4% stake in the BP-operated Clair field.

The Israeli company beat competitors including a consortium formed by Britain's Premier Oil and U.S. private equity fund Apollo Global Management and also British petrochemical maker Ineos Group, the sources said. It hired JP Morgan and BNP Paribas as advisors to the acquisition.

The acquisition would mark another step for Delek toward its expected public listing, the sources said. The company earlier this month acquired Shell's 22.45% stake in the Caesar-Tonga field in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico for $965 million.

Chevron and Delek declined to comment.

Ithaca said in an emailed statement "it is continuously looking at opportunities to grow its business but will not comment on any specific situations or market speculation."

The deal would be just the latest of many that have transformed the population of North Sea producers over the past five years.

Under pressure from a fall in oil prices to near 14-year lows of $26 a barrel in 2016, major oil and gas companies have been forced to sell assets to private equity-backed investors and specialized operators.

Funds including Neptune, backed by Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners, and Chrysaor, backed by EIG Global Partners, among others, have since raised billions of dollars to snap up what they see as bargains in the sector.

Chevron, which produced 50,000 barrels of liquids and 155 million cubic feet of natural gas per day on average in 2017, is looking to free up cash for longer-term, more high-margin businesses in the United States.

Earlier this month, it made a $33 billion bid in cash and stock to buy Anadarko Petroleum and bolster its position in shale oil and the liquid natural gas market, which was however rivaled on Wednesday by Occidental Petroleum Corp.

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New reports have also surfaced that the two have parted ways as a result of their election performance, and Channel 13 News reported that Shaked may instead join Likud.

Following accusations by Bennett and Shaked that thousands of votes had gone missing, the Central Election Committee said it "wishes to clarify that it doesn't take lightly the false claims being made by the New Right, according to which there were irregularities in the counting of double-envelope ballots."

Central Elections Committee Chairman Hanan Melcer, meanwhile, allowed party representatives to look through material from special polling stations.

"In an extraordinary step, above and beyond the demands of the law, [Melcer] allowed the representatives of New Right to examine the materials from the special ballot boxes," the committee said.

"Furthermore, every claim by New Right representatives, no matter the channel by which it came, was checked immediately," the committee added.

The final election results will be presented on Wednesday, committee director Orly Ades told Kan news on Sunday.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS. Read more at https://www.i24news.tv/en.

The post Shaked, Bennett reportedly to split after New Right's election fiasco appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

If the election were held today, the Blue and White list under Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid would win the largest number of seats – 32 – with the Likud in second place, with 27 seats.

This week's poll, conducted by the Maagar Mohot Institute under Professor Ytzhak Katz, polled an especially large number of Israelis. Over 1,000 people in a representative sample of the population responded to questions over the phone or on the Internet. The margin of error was 3.1%.

By law, no additional polls may be published until voting in the election is over at 10 p.m. on April 9.

While the center-left Blue and White party was projected to win the largest number of seats, the right-wing bloc as a whole still held a substantial lead – with a total 64 projected seats, compared to 56 for the Center-Left – assuming that Zehut leader Moshe Feiglin decides to join the right-wing parties, despite his attempts to obscure his far-right background.

Over half (52%) of respondents said they thought Netanyahu would be Israel's next prime minister, compared to only 27% who thought it would be Gantz, and another 21% who said they did not know who would be prime minister.

The poll projected 10 seats for the Labor party and eight seats for Meretz.

The Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox party United Torah Judaism was predicted to win eight seats, while the Sephardi Shas party was predicted to win five.

Kulanu under Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon was predicted to win six seats, as was the Union of Right-Wing Parties (Habayit Hayehudi-National Union-Otzma Yehudit) and the New Right party formed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

According to the poll, Yisrael Beytenu under former Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, would not make it past the minimum electoral threshold.

A total of six seats were projected for the Arab Hadash-Ta'al party, whereas Balad was not expected to pass the minimum threshold.

In addition to looking at which parties respondents planned to vote for, the poll also tried to determine how certain they were about their party choices. It turned out that Netanyahu's claim that Likud voters were asleep at the wheel while Blue and White supporters were fired up turned out to be correct. Among respondents who said they would absolutely be voting, Blue and White received 34 seats, compared to 26 for the Likud.

Among respondents who said they were certain they would vote, the Labor party gained a seat. United Torah Judaism and the Union of Right-Wing Parties also gained seats in the sector of die-hard voters.

Still, the sector of "absolute" voters gave the right-wing bloc 65 projected seats, compared to 55 for the center-left.

In addition, the poll looked at potential voters who were still undecided, 26% of whom said they were leaning toward voting for one of the parties on the Right; 27% of whom were leaning toward the center; and 19% of whom said they would be voting for one of the left-wing parties.

Most of the public is also opposed to the idea of a unity government under the leadership of Likud and Blue and White – 46% they were against a unity government, compared to 31% who favored the idea. However, the idea was more popular among Blue and White supporters, 43% of whom said they opposed a unity government and 41% supported the idea.

The Labor party has said that if Lapid were to forgo his rotating leadership agreement with Gantz (under which, if Blue and White were to win the election and assemble the next government, Gantz would serve as prime minister for the first two years of its term and Lapid for the next two years), the party could attract more voters from the Right.

The poll looked into that scenario and found that most respondents said that Lapid giving up the rotation agreement would not affect their vote. Among those who said it might affect how they voted, 9% said it would prompt them to vote for Blue and White, whereas 4% said they would leave the party if Lapid gave up the rotation.

When asked to rate the election campaign as "fair," "appropriate," "violent," or "dirty," a whopping 69% said that this has been a dirty election.

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