BP: Brazilian Officials' Visit To Gulf Ops Unrelated To Spill

LONDON (Dow Jones)--The visit by several officials from Brazil's National Petroleum Agency to BP PLC's (BP) operations center in Houston, Texas, isn't related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a spokesman from the company said Wednesday. The visit of the officials, who are deciding whether to approve BP's purchase of Brazilian deep water oil assets from Devon Energy Corp. (DVN), was planned long before the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that triggered the oil spill, the spokesman said. BP's purchase of the Devon assets was expected to be approved by all relevant authorities this year and, "the deal is going ahead as planned at this stage," he said. BP is also purchasing Devon assets in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, Canada and Azerbaijan. -By James Herron, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 (0)20 7842 9317; james.herron@dowjones.com (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 16, 2010 09:25 ET (13:25 GMT)