BP has sold British and US oil and gas assets to US company Apache for £1 billion sterling in a move which severs BP's link with part of its history.
The deal is the largest ever for Apache - boosting its output by 29 per cent and enables the Houston company, which has a market capitalisation of over $8 billion, to establish the North Sea as a new area for exploration.
The purchase includes London-based BP's declining Forties field - the largest find ever made in Britain and one of the North Sea's oldest discoveries, dating back to 1970.
The sale of the underperforming assets, in the North Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, is part of BP's bid to squeeze better-quality earnings from its core oil and gas production arm. BP is expected to make more disposals over the coming months, say industry sources.
The Forties field in the North Sea was for many years one of BP's most treasured assets, a prolific field with 2.5 billion barrels yielded to date. It sustained the company through political upheaval in 1979 that forced it out of key producing countries such as Iran and Nigeria.
At its peak in the 1970s and 1980s, Forties supplied about 500,000 barrels per day - a quarter of Britain's oil demand at the time. Now in decline, it pumps just a tenth of that and represents a small fraction of BP's 750,000-barrel output from the North Sea.