The British multinational oil and gas company, BP Plc on Wednesday launched the sale of its U.S. oil and gas onshore assets to help pay for other U.S. based fields it bought from the BHP Group (BHP) in October.
Expected to fetch more than $3 billion, the sale proceeds according to the company, would be utilized to partially fund the $10.5 billion acquisition of BHP’s onshore assets that are mostly around oil-producing fields in Texas and Louisiana. BP, post this acquisition deal, announced that it would finance the deal by selling assets worth $5 billion to $6 billion.
London-listed BP justified this move by saying that this move is in line with the company’s strategy to focus on enhancing its production from its holdings in the Permian and Eagle Ford basins to match rivals Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Chevron (CVX) whose recent investment in the basin is expected to increase their production sharply in the coming years.
Rebranded as BPX, BP’s onshore business, had sent out information packages on the assets it was selling in the last week and its representatives held meeting with the management teams of the potential buyers in New York.
The company decided for the sale following a series of informal talks with different interested private equity firms like the Carlyle Group (CG) and Warburg Pincus, that the company started to hold since the end of November, intended at assessing interest in the assets.