First Reserve in TPC contest

First Reserve Corp.’s bid to acquire TPC Group is suddenly back on the table, after a TPC rival bested by more than $90 million a buyout offer from First Reserve and a fellow investor.

Greenwich-based First Reserve focuses on energy sector investments, with deals in the past week including a $150 million joint venture to build a pipeline from a North Dakota shale field; and the sale of the British offshore energy services company Acteon Group Ltd. to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., in a deal sources told Reuters was valued between $800 million and $900 million.

Houston-based TPC sells a range of chemicals for use in items ranging from fuel blends to synthetic rubber, earning $3.4 million in the second quarter on $690 million in revenue.

With New York City-based SK Capital Partners, First Reserve had originally offered last December up to $35 a share which the companies than negotiated up to $40 or about $627 million in total, even as TPC received additional offers from other, unspecified companies.

TPC now has a $44 offer from the Littleton, Colo.-based fuel treatment company Innospec Inc. with backing from the New York City-based private equity investor Blackstone Group. TPC said the $721 million offer is “reasonably expected to lead to a superior proposal.”

Only in late September, TPC had reported it received clearance from antitrust regulators to complete the First Reserve deal.