BP (NYSE:BP) Sells Columbian Business, Raising $1.9 Billion

As part of the strategy of BP (NYSE:BP) to sell up to $30 billion in assets to raise capital to deal with the mounting claims and liabilities from the Gulf oil spill, they've sold off their Colombian business assets to a Colombian national oil company and a Canadian company.

Included in BP's assets are a transportation business, and oil and gas production.
The Canadian company buying into the assets is Talisman, which will hold 49 percent of the business, and the Ecopetrol, a national Colombian oil company, which will hold a 51 percent stake in the business.
"The two companies will pay BP a total of 1.9 billion dollars in cash ... for 100 per cent of the shares in BP Exploration Company (Colombia) Limited, the wholly-owned BP subsidiary company that holds BP's oil and gas exploration, production and transportation interests in Colombia," they said in a joint statement.
Including the recent deal with Apache (NYSE:APA), this brings the total of assets sold to just under $9 billion so far.

BP has been agressively marketing its upstream assets in Vietnam and Pakistan, with a number of companies and countries expressing an interest.