The Scottish oil and gas minnow, which has long been touted as a takeover target, said yesterday that it is in discussions with Oranje-Nassau Groep, a subsidiary of French investment giant Wende, and Dyas UK, the British-arm of the Dutch oil development and production group. According to industry sources, the partnership has tabled an offer of about 290p a share, valuing EOG at £120m. EOG chief executive Alf Bissett said "there can be no certainty that an offer will be forthcoming". He would, however, be in line for a windfall of almost £4.3m should the deal go through. Yesterday, EOGs stock surged 44.5p to an all-time high of 294.5p on news of the approach, giving the company a market cap of £123m. EOGs main asset it its 5 per cent stake in the mammoth Buzzard field, 80 miles north-east of Aberdeen. The Buzzard field, widely considered the largest offshore discovery in British waters for 25 years, is believed to contain more than 500 million barrels of oil. EOG has pencilled in the fourth quarter of 2006 for first production from the field, and last month boosted the amount of recoverable oil from its stake from 24 to 27 million barrels. Oriel Securities, which kept a "buy" rating on the stock, said EOG could attract rival bids. "The arrival of a public approach puts the company into play with every chance of competing bids," it said in a research note. "While there is no guarantee that this deal will go ahead, we would be surprised if other predators were not circling, including some of the UK mid-caps that could use paper to offer a higher price." Al Stanton, at house broker Bridgewell, said Aberdeen-based Paladin Resources could possibly come in with a counter-bid, but added that 290p-plus a share could prove too expensive for companies such as Dana Petroleum or Venture Production. "The main question now is whether a white knight will emerge to offer another option. A company with UK-listed paper, like Paladin, would certainly appreciate the boost of EOG, but the field is still undeveloped, so it would take a confident finance director to lock in the price though hedging production." EOG has three main institutional shareholders - Fidelity, Asset Value Investments and Jupiter - who together control about 30 per cent of the groups stock. PIN//Scotsman