BP p.l.c. has been on a selling spree. In October the company struck a deal to sell its 50 percent stake in TNKBP, Russia’s third-largest oil company, to OAO Rosneft Oil Company. BP will receive $12.3 billion in cash and an 18.5 percent stake in Rosneft worth about $14 billion. The parties hope to close the deal within six months. Rosneft will buy the rest of TNKBP from Alpha Access Renova, or AAR, the consortium of Russian billionaires that owns the other half of the company.
BP also agreed last year to five different U.S. asset sales of $1 billion or more that could net the troubled oil company up to $12.755 billion, money that will help defray costs associated with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. BP announced within weeks of the disaster that it planned to sell up to $38 billion in assets. It began by selling $7 billion in oil and gas assets in Texas, New Mexico, Canada, and Egypt to Apache Corporation [Big Deals, September 2010] and has since sold properties all over the world.
