NEW YORK — ConocoPhillips said Wednesday that it will sell half of its 20 percent stake in Russian oil giant Lukoil.
The company said the shares are worth about $5 billion. They will be sold on the open market, with proceeds funding a stock repurchase program.
The sale of half of the Lukoil stake is separate from the plan that ConocoPhillips announced last year to unload $10 billion in assets in 2010 and 2011, as it reconfigured itself into a more profitable company with less debt and fewer expensive projects.
ConocoPhillips, based in Houston, invested heavily in acquisitions and projects during the heyday of the oil industry a few years ago. It bought oil-and-gas producer Burlington Resources in 2006 for about $35 billion in cash and additional debt.
The same year it took a 24 percent interest in the 2,000-mile Rockies Express gas pipeline, a $4 billion-plus project.
Rising oil prices helped ConocoPhillips post a profit of $4.85 billion last year after losing $17 billion in 2008. But higher crude prices cut into the company’s refining business.
Chairman and CEO Jim Mulva has said the company is “essentially shrinking to grow” as it sells assets.
“This is the right approach for us over the next number of years, and I think international oil companies are going to have to really look at a somewhat different model,” he said.
The company may also sell its interest in the Syncrude Canadian oil-sands project, its share of the Rockies Express pipeline and 10 percent of its exploration and production properties in the lower 48 states and Canada.
