BP talks North Sea divestment: report

Super-major BP is in talks over a possible sale of its production assets in the North Sea, international media reported on Thursday.

“At the minute, there’s been initial conversations,” an anonymous source told the Wall Street Journal.

The news came days after the European Commission approved the purchase by chemicals company INEOS of BP’s Forties Pipeline System and other North Sea infrastructure for USD 250 million.

Sources told the Wall Street Journal that now the entire range of the company’s producing assets in the area is on offer, though the company dismissed the report as “rumors” and told the newspaper it planned to double its production in the UK’s portion of the sea to 200,000 boepd.

“Our aim is to sustain a material business in the region for decades to come,” BP was quoted as saying.

Production in the area, however, has been in decline since the 1990s, and industry observers say the time may now be ripe for a sale.

“Without material discoveries going forward we’d expect production to go back into terminal decline around 2018 in the U.K.,” Fiona Legate of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie told the Wall Street Journal.