BP has announced the sale of the Forties pipeline (FPS), the Kinneil terminal and gas processing plant, the Dalmeny terminal and the Forties Unity platform in the United Kingdom to Ineos AG for US$250m. 300 employees of the FPS and the Kinneil terminal are expected to join Ineos' upstream business unit. The acquiring entity will be Ineos FPS Ltd, a subsidiary of Ineos Ltd but not a part of the Ineos Group Holdings. The payment comprises a cash payment of US$125m and an earn-out arrangement over seven years for the remaining US$125m.
The Forties pipeline, which currently transports around 450,000 bbl/d from 85 North Sea oil and gas assets, is the North Sea largest and oldest pipeline; it transports oil from the Unity offshore platform to the onshore terminal at Cruden Bay (Aberdeen), down to the Kinneil terminal near the Grangemouth oil refinery (belonging to Ineos). The pipeline carries around 40% of all UK oil production, and 20% of the oil that goes through the pipeline feeds Ineos refinery, which provides 80% of Scotland's fuel. The pipeline was originally built to transport 1 mb/d from the Forties field in the 1970s. The Forties field has been sold by BP to Apache in 2003 and the Grangemouth refinery to Ineos in 2005. Grangemouth is currently Ineos' largest processing facility by volume.
Ineos is steadily expanding its portfolio in the UK and bought notably shale gas assets from Engie earlier this year. The transaction, whose amount was not disclosed, included minority interests in 15 licences, 7 of which Ineos holds an existing interest in. The remaining 8 licences complemented Ineos’ existing licence interests in Yorkshire, Cheshire and the East Midlands. Three of the licences are operated by Ineos, eight by IGas Energy and four by Cuadrilla. They increase the total acreage held by Ineos under licence to more than 1.2 million acres (nearly 4,900 km²). Ineos AG also purchased the Breagh and Clipper South gas fields (Southern North Sea) from Letter One in 2015.
BP has announced that it will focus on new projects in the West Shetland and Central North Sea area and in particular the Quad 204 redevelopment and Clair Ridge project.