BP Puts Its North Sea Drilling Business Up for Sale

The British energy giant BP said on Friday that it was putting its oil and gas business in the North Sea up for sale.

“We believe our North Sea business will be better positioned as part of another company,” Meg O’Neill, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.

The separation is part of a broader realignment by the company, which is working to reduce debt and simplify its operations. The company jolted investors in May when it abruptly fired its chairman.

The North Sea, where BP has operated since 1964, has become an increasingly smaller part of the company’s production.

But the North Sea plays an outsize role in British politics, caught between the country’s continuing demand for natural gas and its commitments to end new fossil fuel development.

The prime minister, Andy Burnham, who took over the Labour Party and formed a government this month, has said he would be “pragmatic” about whether to approve new North Sea drilling because it sustains jobs and economic development. At issue are two gas fields that were approved several years ago when the Conservative Party was in power but were later overturned.

President Trump has repeatedly criticized Britain’s climate change policies and has pressured a succession of prime ministers to embrace his pro-drilling policies. He claimed this week that Mr. Burnham told him he was ready to “open up” the North Sea.

Supporters of drilling in the North Sea argue that expanding domestic extraction is essential to safeguarding Britain’s energy security and shielding households from volatile international gas markets.

Critics, however, contend that North Sea production will do little to lower energy bills — because the oil and gas are sold on global markets — and would severely undermine Britain’s climate goals as well as its standing as a global clean energy leader.

John Underhill, director of energy transition at Aberdeen University, called BP’s decision “the end of an era.” Aberdeen is a port city in northeast Scotland that was a center for North Sea oil extraction.

Last year, BP generated about 5 percent of its oil and gas production from the North Sea, around 117,000 barrels of oil daily.

Of the company’s 13,962 employees, about 1,100 work in the North Sea business, according to BP.

Other major oil companies have already pulled out of the North Sea: ConocoPhillips sold off its British fields in 2019, followed by Exxon Mobil, which parted with decades of North Sea holdings to refocus on U.S. shale and South American deepwater projects. Chevron, the last major American holdout, has also sold its remaining British assets in the North Sea.