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By Clara Denina and Ron Bousso
LONDON, Aug 8 (Reuters) - U.S. oil major Exxon Mobilhas hired investment bank Jefferies to sell the stakes it holdsin oil and gas fields off the Norwegian coast, which could fetchup to $4 billion, banking sources said.
Exxon said in June that it was looking to test marketinterest for its Norwegian upstream portfolio, which includesminority stakes in more than 20 other fields, operated by localproducer Equinor and Anglo-Dutch oil major Royal DutchShell.
The bank has now instructed Jefferies to help with theprocess, three sources said, to accelerate its exit from thenorthern European country where it has been operating for morethan 125 years.
Interested parties are expected to receive a presentation ofthe available assets later in August, one of the sources said.
Exxon and Jefferies declined to comment.
A number of private equity-backed firms, including Okea, andindependent oil companies Aker BP and DNO,have said they were looking to buy more assets on the Norwegiancontinental shelf.
Var Energi, jointly owned by Italy's Eni andNorwegian private equity fund HitecVision, is likely to show aninterest, having previously bought Norwegian assets from Exxonin 2017, a second source said.
The North Sea offshore basin, which started production inthe 1970s, has undergone a broad change of guard in recent yearsas veteran producers have been replaced by smaller players thatsay they can squeeze more oil and gas from the fields.
U.S. major Chevron transferred its last stake in a Norwegianoffshore licence last year, while ConocoPhillips still operatesEkofisk, the first big oil discovery off Norway.
In 2017 Exxon Mobil's net production from fields off Norwaywas about 168,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Its totalnet reserves in the producing fields stood at 422 millionbarrels of oil equivalent by the end of 2018.
(Additional reporting by Nerijius Adomaitis in OsloEditing by David Goodman)
