* Offer of C$52.80/shr is 16 pct premium to Addax close
* Deal gives Sinopec access to West Africa, Iraq fields
* Kurdish assets bring political risk
* Addax shares up 7.3 pct, Sinopec up 1.8 pct (Recasts throughout, adds Sinopec comment, share price)
CALGARY, Alberta, June 24 (Reuters) - Sinopec, China's largest oil refiner, agreed on Wednesday to buy Swiss oil explorer Addax Petroleum Corp for $7.24 billion in China's biggest overseas acquisition, as Beijing snaps up reserves to secure energy supplies to fuel its growing economy.
Addax brings high-potential oil blocks in West Africa and Iraq, risky areas where Western rivals are less keen to enter.
Sinopec International Petroleum Exploration and Production Corp's offer of C$52.80 per share, after it won a behind-the-scenes bidding war with Korea National Oil Co, is a 16 percent premium to Addax's Tuesday close and more than four times the stock's November low of C$12.13.
Analyst Gordon Kwan at Mirae Asset said the around C$8.27 billion offer was fair given prevailing oil prices and the project risks.
"The Addax buy, if completed, is China's single largest oil acquisition in terms of deal value," he noted.
Addax shares rose 7.3 percent to C$48.96 on Wednesday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Shares in China Petroleum & Chemical (Sinopec) opened 1.8 percent higher at HK$5.69 on Thursday, on hopes it could buy Addax assets after the deal to beef up its upstream resource base.
In a statement, Sinopec said the deal would "further enable it to achieve its strategic objective to build a stronger presence and operations in West Africa and Iraq, accelerating its international growth strategy."
Addax has grown quickly since its formation 15 years ago by Chief Executive Jean Claude Gandur. The Geneva-based, Toronto-listed company, named after an African antelope, averaged production of 136,500 barrels a day last year from 537 million barrels of reserves in onshore and offshore fields in West Africa and Iraq's Kurdistan region, including the promising Taq Taq field.
China's state-controlled Sinopec, PetroChina and CNOOC Ltd, which enjoy access to low-cost loans from state-owned banks, have been have been bidding for reserves and supplies, often competing against Indian and other Asian rivals, in regions most Western oil companies are shying away from.
"There's very few parties in the world that are interested in taking Africa risk at this stage," said Dan Barclay, head of mergers and acquisitions, Canada, for BMO Capital Markets.
"It's really the guys like the Chinese and the Indians that are naturally buyers for that.
The deal comes amid a flurry of merger activity in recent weeks among oil exploration and production companies.
Heritage Oil has said it is in merger talks with Genel Energy International, a unit of Turkey's Cukurova Group, and state-owned Emirates National Oil Co has said it is mulling a takeover of Dragon Oil.
Credit Suisse was financial adviser to Sinopec on the deal.
RISKY KURDISH ASSETS
One of Addax's key assets is its Kurdish blocks. Its fields, including Taq Taq, have the capacity to ramp up output sharply in the coming months and have considerable exploration potential.
However, analysts said political risks attached to the assets could prompt Sinopec to sell them on to another party.
Iraq's Kurdistan region consumes relatively little oil and, although Baghdad has recently allowed companies to export oil via state-owned pipelines, there is still no mechanism to allow the companies to be paid for their oil.
The Iraqi oil minister has described contracts such as those signed by Addax as illegal and ruled out paying firms for their oil until a long-stalled oil law is agreed.
Baghdad has also previously barred companies involved in the Kurdish region from bidding for contracts elsewhere in Iraq.
Sinopec is qualified to bid in Iraq's first oil licensing round, scheduled to start next week, as are CNOOC and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC).
The Sinopec deal involves a break-up fee of C$300 million. ($1=$1.15 Canadian) (Reporting by Scott Haggett, Tom Bergin, Pav Jordan, Victoria Bryan, Paul Sandle, Amitha Rajan, Alison Leung and Sui-Lee Wee; editing by Ian Geoghegan)