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Ithaca Energy plc
Ithaca Energy is a UK oil and gas company that pulls hydrocarbons out of the North Sea and sells them on world markets.
Ithaca Energy is a North Sea oil and gas producer. It owns stakes in a set of oil and gas fields off the coast of the UK and Norway, pays to help operate them, pumps the oil and gas out, and sells it. The oil goes onto the global market at whatever price it fetches that day, so Ithaca's fortunes rise and fall with the oil price as much as with how well its wells run.
The company is a pure-play North Sea operator, built up through a string of acquisitions. It bought assets from Marathon Oil and Chevron, then in 2024 it bought most of Eni's UK oil and gas business, becoming one of the largest producers in the UK North Sea. It also picked up stakes from JAPEX and other sellers. Buying already-producing fields is cheaper and faster than exploring and drilling from scratch, which is why Ithaca grows this way. A big part of the story is what happens to the cash. Ithaca pays a dividend and buys back its own shares. It has also been paying down debt, and in 2024 and 2025 it spent heavily on the Eni deal, which pushed its borrowings up and made the balance sheet a focus for investors. The company also faces the UK's windfall tax on oil and gas profits and a political climate that is less friendly to new North Sea drilling, so it is cautious about big new spending projects.
What makes Ithaca vulnerable is simple: it sells a commodity at a price it cannot control, from a mature basin where output naturally declines. Its costs are largely fixed, so when oil prices drop, profits fall fast. Its strength is that it is now one of the biggest players left in the UK North Sea, with scale, existing infrastructure, and a stream of cash it can hand back to shareholders.
Saved answer · last researched 10 Nov 2026
BIG PICTURE
Ithaca's record output was nearly half gas, not oil, even though investors watch crude prices
- 48% Gas share of Q2 2026 output
- 52% Oil and liquids share of output
In the second quarter of 2026, Ithaca pumped a record 131,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day, and 48% of that was gas. Most people picture a North Sea oil company as an oil seller, but nearly half of what Ithaca pulls up is the fuel that heats British homes and feeds power stations. That split matters because gas prices move on their own logic, separate from the crude benchmark traders quote all day. Source: OilPrice.com, data from 2026
Timeline
Ithaca Starts in Canada
Ithaca began in Canada in 2004, but the real story was where it went next. It set its sights on the North Sea, a tough, expensive place to drill, and grew there by buying up other companies' assets and developing its own fields.
A Move to the UK
Soon the company crossed the Atlantic for real, taking over operations at the Beatrice oil field. That move turned Ithaca into a UK North Sea operator, and the North Sea became its home.
Delek Takes Control
In 2017 the Israeli-owned Delek Group bought Ithaca and took it off London's smaller stock market. Delek kept well over three quarters of the company, so Ithaca now had a single powerful owner calling the shots.
Buying Siccar Point
A few years later Ithaca made a bold bet, buying Siccar Point Energy for about 1.5 billion dollars. The prize was stakes in two big untapped fields, Rosebank and Cambo, which gave the company a much larger runway for future production.
The 2022 London Listing
Ithaca then went public on the London Stock Exchange, and it was the UK's biggest listing of the year. But the shares fell on their first day of trading, as investors worried about a new windfall tax on North Sea profits. The company was now big and public, but the mood around it was shaky.
The Eni Combination
Then came the deal that changed Ithaca's size entirely. It combined with the UK offshore assets of Italy's Eni, with Eni taking a large stake alongside Delek as a controlling owner. Suddenly Ithaca was one of the largest independent producers in the UK North Sea.
Vasques Takes the Top Job
To run the enlarged group, Ithaca picked Luciano Vasques, who had been the managing director of Eni UK. He knew the assets from the inside, which made him a natural fit to lead the combined business.
Into the FTSE 100
The growth paid off in 2026, when Ithaca was promoted to the FTSE 100, the club of Britain's biggest listed companies. A company that started small in Canada was now among the UK's corporate heavyweights.
Ithaca Goes to Canada
Ithaca's next move reached far beyond the North Sea, agreeing to buy offshore oil assets in eastern Canada from Suncor Energy for 860 million dollars upfront. It was the company's first purchase outside UK waters, adding the Terra Nova and White Rose interests and a new stream of production to support its long-term output target.
Vasques Plans to Retire
As Ithaca pushed into international expansion, CEO Luciano Vasques said he intended to retire by the end of March 2027. The board began hunting for a successor to lead the company into its next chapter.