BP quits Forties field in £812m deal

BP denied yesterday that it had decided to turn its back on the North Sea after announcing the sale of the Forties field, the first big oil discovery in UK waters, in a deal worth £812m.

The sale of BP's 96 per cent interest in Forties to the US oil and gas company Apache brings down the shutters on a piece of Britain's industrial heritage. When the field was discovered in 1970 and opened by the Queen five years later it signalled the start of the North Sea oil boom.

At its peak in 1979, the Forties field produced some 500,000 barrels a day – a quarter of total UK oil demand. To date some 2.5 billion barrels have been produced from Forties.

In the past decade, however, production has dwindled and the field now produces just 48,000 barrels a day – 6 per cent of BP's North Sea output and less than 1.5 per cent of its worldwide production.

The Conservatives claimed the sell-off was the result of Gordon Brown's decision to increase taxes on oil production. "This is a devastating indictment of Labour's taxation of North Sea oilfields," the Tories' energy spokesman, Crispin Blunt, said. "Last year's unexpected tax hike by the Chancellor has contributed directly to BP's decision."

However, BP flatly contradicted the Opposition's claims. "Forties is not our flagship field and the sale of it has absolutely nothing to do with the change in taxation. You don't buy and sell assets on the strength of taxation, except at the very margins."

BP officials said the cost of getting oil out of Forties, the most mature of all North Sea fields, was twice the average. The sale of the field was part of a decision to "rebalance" BP's portfolio away from older, more costly fields and towards more efficient ones in regions such as Angola, Trinidad and Tobago and the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

The Forties pipeline, which serves some 40 North Sea fields and carries 1 million barrels ashore a day, is not included in the sale.