Oil major BP is to sell a refinery in California, along with some 800 petrol stations in the western US, for $2.5 billion (£1.6bn) to help meet the costs of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.
The British group is selling the assets to Texas-based refiner Tesoro, which expects to complete the deal by the middle of next year. The refinery, with a capacity of 266 million barrels a day, is next to a Tesoro plant in the city of Carson.
Combining the two is expected to cost $225 million but deliver annual savings of about $250m, Tesoro said. The company also will acquire BP’s 51 per cent stake in a 400-megawatt power station that supplies electricity to the Carson refinery and the local area.
BP, which recently unveiled a slide in quarterly profits because of weaker oil and gas prices, has now sold or agreed to sell assets worth $26.5bn since the start of 2010. The company has a target of $38bn in disposals by the end of next year to help pay the costs of the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico blowout.
Iain Conn, chief executive of BP’s global refining and marketing business, said: “We are pleased to be delivering on the plan we announced last year and when complete we will have a smaller, but well-positioned and very competitive portfolio of refining and marketing businesses in the US.”
Separately, the group, which employs about 23,000 people in the US, said it was selling two gas processing plants in Texas to Eagle Rock Energy Partners for $227.5m in cash.