BP on Monday said it had agreed to sell its ill-fated Texas City refinery to Marathon Petroleum to help fund compensation costs resulting from the 2010 oil spill disaster.
"BP announced today it has reached an agreement to sell its Texas City... refinery and a portion of its retail and logistics network in the southeast US to Marathon Petroleum Corp. for $2.5 billion," the company said.
The Texas City facility suffered a deadly explosion in 2005 that killed 15 workers and sparked safety concerns across BP's U.S. operations.
The British energy giant is meanwhile selling assets to help pay costs arising from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.
"With today's agreement the total value of the divestments that BP has agreed since the beginning of 2010 is now over $35 billion. BP expects this total to reach $38 billion by the end of 2013," the company said on Monday.
BP's fortunes were ravaged two years ago by an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers, sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the sea.
The blast on April 20, 2010, sparked what was been widely acknowledged to be the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.
In February 2011, BP (IW 1000/4) said it would sell off two major U.S. refineries to help meet the clean-up bill from the disaster.
Last August, the group announced a deal to sell its Carson refinery in California to peer Tesoro Corp. for $2.5 billion.
Subject to regulatory and other approvals, Marathon Petroleum will acquire the Texas City 475,000 barrel-per-day refinery, associated natural gas liquids pipelines, and four marketing terminals in the southeastern US.
Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012
