HOUS­TON-BP Plc has been in talks to sell its 400,780 bar­rel-per-day Texas City, Texas, re­fin­ery to Marathon Pe­tro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion, ac­cord­ing to a re­port post­ed by the Fi­nan­cial Times on its Web site yes­ter­day. The talks have been un­der way for months, ac­cord­ing to the re­port, which cites uniden­ti­fied sources. The plant's sale could bring BP up to US$2.5 bil­lion. A BP spokesman de­clined to dis­cuss pos­si­ble ne­go­ti­at­ing part­ners with Reuters yes­ter­day.

"We re­main in ad­vanced ne­go­ti­a­tions for a sale of the Texas City re­fin­ery," said BP spokesman Scott Dean. "We re­main on track to an­nounce a sale by year-end 2012." A Marathon spokesman de­clined to dis­cuss the Fi­nan­cial Times re­port. BP an­nounced in 2011 it would put the Texas City and Car­son, Cal­i­for­nia, re­finer­ies up for sale. On Au­gust 13, BP an­nounced it would sell the 240,000 bpd Car­son re­fin­ery and re­lat­ed as­sets for US$2.5 bil­lion, pend­ing reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval.

In­de­pen­dent re­fin­er Marathon has long been con­sid­ered a po­ten­tial con­tender to buy the Texas City re­fin­ery. Marathon owns an 80,000 bpd re­fin­ery in Texas City across the street from BP's plant.

Reuters