Sembcorp keen on buying buy BP stake in Vietnam utility

Singapore’s Sembcorp Industries Ltd. (U96.SG) is seeking to buy a stake in a power plant in Vietnam from BP PLC (BP.LN), joining companies across the world keen to pick assets being sold by the energy major to help pay for the cleanup of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

“We are interested. We can’t share more details at this stage,” a spokeswoman for Singapore-listed Sembcorp told Dow Jones Newswires. The spokeswoman’s comments followed a report in the Business Times Tuesday that Sembcorp Utilities Ltd. is keen on buying BP’s one-third stake in the Phu My 3 Power Co. natural gas-fired plant.

Sembcorp Utilities and BP each own one-third of the 728-megawatt plant, located 70 kilometers from Ho Chi Minh City, with the rest split between Japan’s Kyushu Electric Power Co. (9508.TO) and Sojitz Corp. The plant uses gas from offshore fields operated by BP.

A BP spokeswoman in Singapore declined comment saying “we don’t comment on market speculation.”

BP has said it will sell some of its Vietnam assets, principally the Nam Con Son gas project, as part of a $30 billion divestment process to raise money to cover the cost of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The company had informed staff and government that it planned to divest the project by the end of the year, a BP spokesman said on July 29, declining to state a value for the assets.

The divestments won’t include BP’s downstream businesses in Vietnam, the spokesman had said.

On July 27, a consortium of four Indian state-run companies said they will likely join with Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, or PetroVietnam, to buy BP stake in the Nam Con Son gas project.

The U.K. company, which has already spent about $4 billion on the spill and has agreed to pay $20 billion for a cleanup and compensation fund, has put assets in several parts of the world, including the U.S., Canada, Pakistan and Vietnam on sale to generate money.

BP agreed to sell $7 billion of oil and gas assets in North America and Egypt to Apache Corp. (APA) on July 20, a deal investors said demonstrated the embattled company’s ability to raise funds easily without resorting to a ‘fire sale’.

By Gaurav Raghuvanshi; Dow Jones Newswires; +65 64154 154; [email protected]

Tags: BP assets in Vietnam, BP stake in Vietnam, Sembcorp