5 things you need to know about BP’s North Sea sale

Long synonymous with North Sea oil, BP’s announcement that it plans to exit marks the end of over 60 years of pioneering commercial operations in the basin. But while BP is stepping away, citing capital discipline and the need to create ‘a simpler, stronger and more valuable company’, what do its UK upstream assets offer buyers?

Using our proprietary tools and intelligence, Wood Mackenzie’s North Sea upstream experts have crunched the numbers and done the due diligence to assess the opportunities BP’s UK portfolio presents. The full report is available only to subscribers, but we’ve created a free insight that answers five key questions about the deal.

• What is the value of BP’s UK portfolio? We’ve carried out portfolio analysis across the firm’s 18 producing fields across five North Sea hubs to assess its valuation.
• What factors will impact portfolio valuation? In addition to our base-case view, we’ve carried out sensitivity analysis around three key scenarios that could affect deal value.
• What qualities must buyers possess to make the portfolio successful? We assess what will be needed to ensure profitability, given the maturity of the basin and recent fiscal and regulatory uncertainty.
• Who are the most likely buyers? We assess key potential purchasers based on size, basin experience and other factors — along with some possible wild cards.
• What sort of deal can be expected? The UK North Sea today has a specific set of above and below ground risks. To bridge potential valuation gaps driven by ‘known unknowns’ and market uncertainty, we expect BP to be open to a range of deal structures.

Get more insight

Now fill out the form at the top of the page to download the complementary article which draws on the key findings from the full report to answer these questions.