BP buys BHP’s US oil and gas assets

BP has announced that it will be buying BHP’s US shale oil and gasfields for US$10.5bn. The acquisition will enable BP to gain high-quality oil assets and to shift its focus in the US to include more oil production, as recently its US business has mainly been gas production. The deal covers 190,000 ha of assets, including the Eagle Ford and Permian basins in Texas, as well as the gas-rich Haynesville region. BP’s US oil production alone should increase from 10,000 bbl/d to 200,000 bbl/d by the mid-2020s. It is the largest acquisition that BP has made since the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, which killed 11 workers and spilled 3m bbl of oil into the ocean. BP was forced to pay out more than US$65bn in damages.