BP PLC (BP) said Tuesday it has agreed to sell its Colombian oil and gas exploration and production business to Ecopetrol SA (ECOPETROL.BO) and Talisman Energy Inc. (TLM.T) for $1.9 billion.
BP PLC (BP) said Tuesday it has agreed to sell its Colombian oil and gas
exploration and production business to Ecopetrol SA (ECOPETROL.BO) and Talisman
Energy Inc. (TLM.T) for $1.9 billion.
BP is looking to divest about $30 billion in assets over the next 18 months to
raise money to cover the cost of the
Gulf of Mexico
oil
spill. BP has already struck a $7 billion deal to sell assets in
North
America
and
Egypt
to
Apache Corp. (APA).
"I am delighted with the price we have achieved for these assets,"
said BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward, who will step down on Oct. 1. "BP
has been involved in
Colombia
for
more than 20 years...but it now makes sense for the assets to go to owners more
willing than BP to invest in their future development."
BP has got a "very, very good" price for the assets, said NCB
Stockbrokers analyst Peter Hutton.
The value of the deal is a surprising $32 a barrel for the resources involved,
although, "this implied price will be inflated by inclusion of Cusiana gas
processing facility and pipelines which needs to be stripped out," he
said. This compares with $19.44 per barrel of proved reserves for BP's Apache
deal, he said.
This deal bodes well for BP's reported plans to sell its Argentine unit Pan
American Energy, said Hutton. "Neither of these are distressed asset
sales," he added.
BP is in talks with Argentina's Bridas Corp. to sell its 60% stake in Pan
American for around $9 billion, a person familiar with the talks told Dow Jones
Newswires last month.
Ecopetrol
,
Colombia
's
national oil company, will buy 51% of the business and Talisman 49%. They will
pay BP a cash deposit of $1.25 billion and the balance when the deal passes
regulatory approvals, expected by the end of this year.
"I am really pleased with this deal," said Ecopetrol's Chief
Executive Javier Gutierrez. "It fits into our strategic plan perfectly,
bringing new reserves, production and potential areas for our exploratory
portfolio," he said.
"These are tremendous assets that our team knows well. They are
attractively priced, with excellent running room and we are partnering with the
preeminent oil and gas company in
Colombia
,"
said Talisman President and Chief Executive John Manzoni. Talisman is already
partnered with Ecopetrol in several oil licenses in
Colombia
and
Peru
.
BP's
Colombia
business has interests in five producing fields, four separate pipelines and
two offshore exploration blocks, the company said. Net proved reserves total
some 60 million barrels of oil equivalent and net production of approximately
25,000 boe a day.
Most of the producing assets are mature. BP discovered the oil and gas reserves
in the Casanare province in the early 1990s. Output there peaked in 1999, when
it averaged 434,000 barrels a day. BP licenses in the eastern Casanare province
are scheduled to expire between 2016 and 2020.
The deal is expensive, but, "there is a lot of upside in the probable
reserves, exploration projects," said Rupert Stebbings, a stock analyst at
the Colombian unit of Celfin brokerage.
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