Leaving the Bay

BP is selling off fields on the American shelf

The BP Corporation, whose fate fatally changed after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, is gradually withdrawing from this oil-bearing region. The next lot in the long list of assets being sold by BP was shares in a number of local fields. The buyer was the Japanese company Marubeni Oil and Gas, which offered $650 million for four subsoil plots with a daily production volume of about 15 thousand barrels of oil equivalent. BP itself explained that these objects simply “did not fit into BP’s business in the region.” However, their sale, experts believe, is part of a plan to completely wind down the British company’s business in the United States.

Shares in the Magnolia (25%), Merganser (50%), Nansen (50%) and Zia (65%) fields were purchased by BP relatively recently - in March last year. At that time, these four deepwater areas of the American shelf were only part of BP's deal with Devon Energy, the total amount of which was $7 billion. But at the heart of the deal were Devon's assets in Brazil and Azerbaijan. Since then, BP's position has changed dramatically. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has already cost the corporation more than $11 billion. However, this amount is far from final, especially considering that BP voluntarily refused the opportunity to limit its payments to victims to $75 million in accordance with the oil pollution law.

Instead, BP continued its massive asset sale. Just last week, two buyers appeared for the company’s gas projects in the Pakistani province of Sindh. They were the British Premier Oil and the Arab wealth fund Mubadala. According to experts, the amount of the future transaction may exceed $0.5 billion. In addition, Russia has become one of the largest buyers of BP assets. BP managed to reach an agreement with partners from TNK-BP on the sale of Vietnamese and Venezuelan assets for $1.8 billion. Let us recall that we are talking, in particular, about the gas fields of the Vietnamese shelf Lan Tay and Lan Do, the Nam Con Son pipeline and terminal and power plant Phu My 3, as well as 16.66% in the Petromanagas field in the Orinoco River delta (at the same time, the companies’ agreements on Vietnam may not be implemented, since the local oil and gas corporation PetroVietnam may exercise the priority right to purchase facilities located in Vietnam).

At the same time, BP decided not to give up its Brazilian and even Azerbaijani assets, the sale of which would have made it possible to obtain significantly more funds to pay compensation. On the contrary, a decision was made to sell the deposits that were far from being the most expensive. According to corporate vice-president Andy Hopwood, BP management believed that the four sites in the Gulf of Mexico "would prove more valuable to another company." In reality, as experts interviewed by Vremya Novostei note, the British choice fully fits into the strategy of withdrawing BP’s business from the United States. Let us recall that back in the summer, according to Western media, the “Future of BP” plan was developed (see “Vremya Novostey” on July 19) , according to which all the corporation’s assets in the United States should be sold off. In addition to a significant number of offshore fields, BP also owns an extensive network of gas stations, oil storage facilities with a total capacity of 7.8 million barrels and 160 km of oil pipelines in the United States. All major oil companies have already shown interest in BP's assets, including Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips.

Petr GELTISHCHEV