A deal to merge DEA, a vehicle of Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, and Wintershall, the oil and gas unit of chemical giant BASF is expected to be finalized soon, John Browne, who runs the oligarch’s oil business, said April 24.

“We expect to conclude the combination agreement before the middle of the year,” Browne, who was in Israel to join the board of maritime risk analytics startup Windward, told reporters.

Government approvals from each jurisdiction it operates in should take until around year-end 2018 and it aims to take the company public on the Frankfurt market about 18 months after that, subject to market conditions, said Browne, the former chief of oil major BP who led BP's transformational acquisitions of Arco and Amoco in the 1990s.

BASF has said the merger will likely close by the end of third-quarter 2018.

The merged entity would become the biggest independent oil and gas firm in Europe and the first German champion in the sector, with output of around 600,000 barrels of oil and gas equivalent per day and estimated annual earnings of more than 2 billion euros (US $2.4 billion).

Fridman’s LetterOne Group outbid BASF in 2014 to acquire DEA from German utility RWE, in a move to diversify its energy interests outside Russia. Now BASF would hold the majority of the shares in the joint enterprise.

Browne told Reuters last month he saw a need for consolidation in the sector as demand for oil was expected to come under threat by the early 2030s, as the world shifts away from fossil fuels to reduce carbon emissions and fight global warming.