Statoil May Buy BP Assets, Expert Says

As BP now is about to sell assets for nearly NOK 200 billion, Statoil may be one of the buyers, says Norway‘s foremost expert on the petroleum industry economics, professor Øystein Noreng at the Norwegian School of Management.

“Statoil is looking, Statoil’s got a lot of money and they’re going global.”

Øystein Noreng

“Statoil is looking, Statoil has a lot of money and thet’re going global. It is clear that BP must sell assets worth hundreds of billion, but exactly which assets BP will sell, to who, or from whom Statoil will buy, I don’t know, the know, professor Noreng says in an interview, published on the website E24.no.

Øystein Noreng at the Norwegian School of Management is regarded as one of the top experts in the world on petroleum economics.

Within the next 18 months, BP will seek to reduce net debt by 10 to 15 billion dollars. Among other things, BP will sell assets for a total of 30 billion dollar. (185.2 billion Norwegian kroner).

“BP will sell a portion of their holdings, even in Mexico. It’s not known if it’s the deep water installations,” says Noreng.

The new top manager at BP, Robert Dudley, said at the current quarter earnings report presentation that he will change the BP from a company that produces four million barrels of oil per day, to one that produces 3.5 million oil per day. Dudley also said that the company will have assets of “higher quality” and a more focused portfolio.

It’s a quite polite way of saying; BP must sell a lot of assets.

BP reported Tuesday morning on a negative second quarter results at 16.973 billion dollars.

Loss for the second quarter of 2010 will stand as one of the biggest losses for a British company ever.

The bill for oil disaster has, according to the company itself now reached 32 billion dollars.

BP says in a statement that the company will not shrink “dramatically” in the United States. Chairman Svanberg sees no great change in the structure of the company, E24.no writes.

A Heap of Scrap

BP have earlier been accused of having the worst platforms on the Norwegian continental shelf, whit half of the oil installations in the North Sea outdated.

BP’s own fields Valhall is being described as a heap of scrap, by sources speaking with the Norwegian news paper, Dagbladet.

“We’ve had problems with bacterias eating up the pipes from the inside, it’s about just the paint again. One worker started to pick off some old paint on one of the tubes, and then suddenly the oil sprayed out. The pipes are so rusty that they hardly can be disassembled, “ said an anonymous source to the newspaper.