BP’s North Sea business is expected to escape largely unscathed from the oil giant’s move to sell worldwide assets for up to £19billion.
North Sea managing director Bernard Looney reiterated the group’s commitment to the UK-Norwegian operation following yesterday’s announcement.
He told the Press and Journal: “BP intends to retain a significant business in the North Sea.
“The business has contributed significantly to BP’s strong underlying performance in the first half of 2010 and remains a very important contributor to the group’s cash flows.
“In the North Sea, BP has a significant investment programme over the next few years, including developing six major projects in the UK and Norway, which are all progressing according to schedule.”
BP said the asset sales over the next 18 months would mainly be in the exploration and production part of the business and the interests to go would be selected on the basis of them being worth more to other companies.
BP said the sale would leave it with a smaller but higher-quality exploration and production business.
It has worldwide exploration and production assets worth around £160billion.
The £19billion of disposals would include recently-announced asset sales in the US, Canada and Egypt to Apache for about £4.6billion. Places where other operations could be sold include Vietnam, Pakistan, Alaska, Russia, Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela.
BP has its North Sea headquarters at Dyce, Aberdeen, and this part of the business employs around 3,000 people.
The group operates 45 North Sea oil and gas fields in the UK and Norwegian sectors and has stakes in about a dozen others. Most North Sea assets at risk of disposal would be stakes in smaller, lower-quality fields, but the large offshore operations are thought to be safe.
One Aberdeen BP employee said: “People are pretty relaxed here. The company has big plans for North Sea investment and they are moving ahead. The possibility of major sales in the North Sea operation isn’t being contemplated by workers. It’s not even coming into our conversations.”
In March, the company signalled a vote of confidence in the North Sea by announcing plans to spend billions of pounds in Scottish waters over the next few years.
BP is determined to invest heavily to keep North Sea production above the 300,000-barrels-a-day mark – at least until 2020.
Earlier this month, it said it was moving ahead with plans for the £4billion phase two development of the giant Clair field west of Shetland.
The company has just awarded a £177million contract to Norway’s Aker Solutions for two steel jackets for platforms for the project, known as Clair Ridge.
Clair was one of the largest undeveloped reservoirs in the UK continental shelf before production started in February 2005. Phase one produces about 50,000 barrels of oil daily. There is thought to be more than 4billion barrels still in the Clair area.
Clair Ridge is expected to come on stream by the middle of 2015. Daily production is expected to reach 120,000 barrels.
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