Suitors come a'calling. The Tulsa energy company Williams, which has refining operations in the oil sands near Fort McMurray, Alberta (above), is the latest name floated as a potential buyer for BP's Canadian gas assets. (image: nytimes.com)
The name of an Oklahoma energy company is being floated as a potential buyer for BP’s liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) assets in Canada, writes the local Tulsa World.
The newspaper says the Tulsa-based Williams Companies, which already operate liquid gas facilities in Western Canada, could be sniffing around the sale. Though the company is late to this ball: Williams was left off a list of possible buyers in Bloomberg’s story last week.
BP has been shedding properties to help pay its estimated $30 billion clean-up bill for the Gulf oil spill earlier this year. Estimates put the price tag on the Canadian offering at about $2 billion.
Though international interest could goose the price. Speculation on a potential buyer has centered on two Calgary companies, Provident Energy Trust and Keyera Facilities Income Fund, and Houston’s Spectra Energy Corp. Williams makes it four, which must be welcome news at BP. It’s a sellers market, one energy analyst told the Wall Street Journal, and BP has collected nicely on its recent sales.
BP has one natural gas liquids fractionation plant in Ontario, and two in Alberta, according to its website. It is also developing three deposits in the Athabasca oil sands of Eastern Alberta.
A Williams spokeswoman would not comment to Tulsa World. The company currently has extraction operations in Athabasca, along with a $238 million gas liquids pipeline out of the region that’s in the works.