TNK-BP Ltd, BP PLC's (BP, BP.LN) Russian joint venture, has decided to
make BP a formal offer for its assets in
Vietnam
and
Venezuela
, a
person familiar with the matter said.
TNK-BP's board, meeting in
Cyprus
, gave
management the go-ahead to negotiate a deal, the person said. He added that
TNK-BP was also interested in buying BP's assets in
Algeria
,
though negotiations had not yet started.
TNK-BP's chief executive Maxim Barsky said this week that the company wanted to
buy BP's stake in a Vietnamese gas deposit called Block 06-1, part of the $1.3
billion Nam Con Son project offshore of
Ho
Chi Minh City
. BP declined to comment.
(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall
Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com.)
Also Friday, Tony Hayward, BP's outgoing chief executive, took his place on the
TNK-BP board for the first time. He was appointed a non-executive director of
TNK-BP when it was announced he was stepping down as BP chief, to be succeeded
by the American, Bob Dudley.
A source close to the Russian shareholders in TNK-BP said
Hayward
had
been given a "warm welcome."
BP is trying to sell as much as $30 billion of assets over the next 18 months
to cover the cost of the
Gulf of Mexico
oil
spill. It has already raised about $10 billion, and bankers say selling the
Vietnamese, Venezuelan and Algerian assets could get the company roughly
halfway to its goal.
In
Algeria
, BP
has two large natural gas projects, In Salah, which covers seven fields in the
southern
Sahara
desert, and in Amenas. BP also participates in the
Rhourde El Baguel oil project and is exploring for oil in the Bourarhet block
next to In Amenas.
In
Venezuela
, BP
has minority stakes in two joint ventures with state-owned Petroleos de
Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, and is a partner in Petromonaga, which produces 110,000
barrels a day.
The deals would be a coup for TNK-BP, a 50-50 joint venture between BP and a
group of Soviet-born billionaires, which has been keen to expand
internationally. It previously focused almost exclusively on Russia.