Friday, July 23, 2010

BP's (NYSE:BP) Alaskan Assets May Be On the Block Again

After some movement on other assets BP (NYSE:BP) is selling to raise capital to fund its liabilities in the Macondo Well oil spill, reports are they may be opening up talks again concerning assets it holds in Alaska, including the Prudhoe Bay oil field, which they hold a 26 percent stake in.

BP couldn't get the deal done with Apache (NYSE:APA), which seemingly wasn't willing to pay the price BP wanted, with approximately $1 billion separating the parties. BP had asked for about $10 billion and Apache was holding strong at close to $9 billion.

They did sell other assets to Apache earlier in the week for $7 billion, which were located in Egypt and North America.

This week BP also let it be known assets in Vietnam and Colombia were also for sale, which has generated significant interest, especially the Vietnam assets.

A number of government-owned oil companies are always looking out for energy assets to acquire, so BP will get a good price for those the choose to sell, even though it is known they need the cash badly.

Prudhoe Bay also had the sticking point of the right of first refusal from existing partners in the project, which include oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM), ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) and Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX). Exxon and Conoco have equal stakes of 36 percent and Chevron a small 2 percent stake.

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