LONDON—British Petroleum (BP) PLC confirmed Tuesday it will market some oil and gas interests in the U.K. as part of a divestment program to recoup the costs of its Gulf of Mexico spill.
The North Sea element of the sale—which press reports value at potentially $1 billion—is part of a plan to sell as much as $30 billion of assets to cover an expected bill of $40 billion relating to the oil spill off the U.S. coast last year.
The British oil giant also said the prospective sale would help focus resources in other areas of the North Sea where it intends to invest about £12 billion ($19.46 billion) in total over the next five years.
The assets include Wytch Farm onshore oilfield in Dorset, southern England, which BP describes as the largest onshore oil field in Western Europe but recently shut it down for a few months after an oil-pipeline leak.
BP is also selling all majority stakes in aging gas fields in the southern North Sea and associated infrastructure, aiming to complete the divestments around the end of 2011. The North Sea was one of BP's core areas but many of its oil-and-gas fields there are old and its production is now a third of what it was at its peak.
Apart from Europe, the oil giant has also agreed sizeable sales elsewhere. Last fall, it sold its stake in Argentina-based oil-and-gas company Pan American Energy LLC to Bridas Corp. for $7 billion.
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