CHICAGO — BP may have to sell some of its most valued assets, including a stake in the biggest U.S. oil field, to pay cleanup costs, fines and legal damages from the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.
The 26 percent stake in Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope and other BP assets could attract suitors such as China National Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum and Hess, said Douglas Ober, chief executive of Petroleum & Resources in Baltimore, the oldest U.S. oil fund.
“BP is going to have to look to other assets to pay for this mess they’re creating,” said Ober, who oversees a combined $1.6 billion at the fund and Adams Express Co. “They won’t be able to use any of that cash flow to expand production or add to reserves, and that’s really going to put them in a bind.”
BP has lost 31 percent of its market value since the April 20 fire in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers, sank a $365 million rig and triggered subsea leaks that have spewed millions of gallons of crude into the gulf. The company has spent more than $1 billion trying to staunch the leaks and remove oil from the ocean.
Ober sold all of his BP stock after 15 refinery workers died in a 2005 explosion at the company’s plant in Texas City, Texas.
Asset sales by BP are more likely than a takeover of the company because it’s too soon to estimate how much the spill and its aftermath will end up costing, said Gianna Bern, founder of Brookshire Advisory & Research Inc. in Flossmoor, Ill., and a former BP crude trader.
