BP has continued its divestment programme by selling $5.55bn worth of Gulf of Mexico assets to US group Plains Exploration.
The deal includes the Marlin, Dorado and King fields, as well as BP's stakes in Horn Mountain and Holstein. It brings the total proceeds from the sale programme instigated after the Deepwater Horizon disaster to $32bn, out of a total target of $38bn. BP's chief executive Bob Dudley said:
While these assets no longer fit our business strategy, the Gulf of Mexico remains a key part of BP's global exploration and production portfolio, and we intend to continue investing at least $4bn there annually over the next decade.
Analysts said the company had received a good price for the assets, and BP's shares have added 2.85p to 437.55p. Peter Hutton at RBC Capital Markets said:
The implied price of the deal is significantly higher than we had expected. We estimated the value of the assets at $2.2bn.
We see this a positive progress for BP towards their divestment target, which now reaches $32bn of the $38bn target by the end of 2013, with Texas City ($3.5bn to $4bn estimate) still to come and smaller deals of assets not yet announced.
