Report: BP in Talks to Sell Texas City Refinery

BP PLC (IW 1000/4) is in talks to sell its Texas City, Texas, refinery to Marathon Petroleum Corp. (IW 1000/45) as part of plans to cover costs for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

The Financial Times, which cited a source familiar with the matter, said the companies have been in talks for months over a transaction that could raise up to $2.5 billion (1.9 billion euros).

However, the paper added that it is "unclear" if a deal could be reached over the Texas City facility, which suffered a deadly explosion in 2005 that killed 15 workers and sparked safety concerns across BP's U.S. operations.

London-based BP already has stated that it will sell $38 billion of assets by the end of 2013 to help pay the cleanup bill and compensation costs from the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010.

Last month, BP announced a deal to sell its Carson refinery in California to Tesoro Corp. (IW 1000/144) for $2.5 billion.

BP's fortunes were ravaged two years ago by an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the sea.

The blast on April 20, 2010, sparked what has been widely acknowledged to be the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history.

In February 2011, the group said it would sell off two major U.S. refineries as part of a restructuring to shift its focus away from the United States and to finance the cleanup bill from the disaster.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2012