MOSCOW (MRC) -- The British government has told BP it would oppose any potential takeover of the company, which was seriously weakened by the huge bill incurred after the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon disaster five years ago, reported Financial Times.
Amid wider consolidation in the energy sector, triggered by the sharp fall in oil prices, Downing Street has informed BP and senior City figures that it wants the group to remain a British industrial champion with global reach.
Prime Minister David Cameron has long presented Britain as a welcoming destination for foreign investment, but his government has made it clear that it would not remain neutral if the company were the target of a foreign takeover.
Analysts have in the past linked ExxonMobil, the world’s largest non-state oil company, to a possible move on BP. But British officials have told the Financial Times that Number 10 would be "sceptical" about any takeover - even if it involved Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil major - because it wants Britain to have two big global oil companies.
BP declined to comment on whether the UK government had discussed the issue with the company. But Number 10 said: "The government talks to a wide range of UK businesses, as you would expect. It is in the UK’s interest to have British companies competing and succeeding at home and abroad."
We remind that, as MRC wrote before, BP has planned to invest over USD200 million to upgrade its purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plants at Cooper River, South Carolina and Geel, Belgium. The investments will position these assets amongst the most efficient PTA manufacturing facilities in the world.
BP is one of the world's leading international oil and gas companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.
MRC