MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

BP sells assets in US, Canada and Egypt to pay clean up bill

Pan American assets in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile are next in the list

British Petroleum is to sell assets in Texas, Canada and Egypt, to part-fund the clean-up cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The oil giant said it had reached a 7 billion US dollars deal with US-based oil production firm Apache Corp.

Assets in Pan American which operates in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile and thought to be worth 9 billion US dollars could be the second batch of sales.

The proceeds will go towards a fund set up to pay for clean-up costs and claims for damages resulting from the spill.

Meanwhile, US incident commander Admiral Thad Allen said BP could continue a pressure test of the well for another 24 hours, saying it appeared stable.

He said five small leaks had been found around the well, which has been closed in for the past five days using a new cap, but that they were more like “drips” than a serious concern.

“We've found nothing that would be consequential toward the integrity of the wellhead to date,” Admiral Allen told reporters at a briefing in Washington. He said the US government and BP were continuing to discuss the possibility of a so-called “static kill” - an operation to pump drilling mud and cement into the well to stop the flow.

BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said the deal with Apache was the first sale of assets to help pay for the spill. BP has already spent some 4 billion on efforts to contain and clean-up the oil and compensate those people affected by it.

The company said the assets sold included oil fields and gas processing plants in Texas and south-east New Mexico worth 3.1 billion and BP's upstream Western Canadian gas business for 3.25 billion. The deal also included oil exploration and production assets in Egypt worth about 650 million US dollars.

BP's share of the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska was not included in the sale to Apache, contrary to earlier media speculation.

The company had also been thought to be looking at a sale of assets in Vietnam and Pakistan, and of its majority stake in its subsidiary Argentine Pan American, which operates in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia, and is thought to be worth about 9 billion USD.