BP Hires HSBC To Sell Stake In Vietnam Gas Field - Source

By Jessica Hodgson and James Herron Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES LONDON (Dow Jones)--BP PLC (BP) has hired HSBC Holdings PLC (HBC) to sell its stake in a natural gas field in Vietnam, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday. BP has said it will sell 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. A spokesman Thursday said that the company had informed staff and government that it planned to divest the project, and hoped to have done so by the end of the year, but declined to comment further. The divestments won't include BP's downstream businesses in Vietnam, the spokesman added. A consortium of Indian companies--Oil India Ltd. (533106.BY), GAIL (India) Ltd. (532155.BY), Oil & Natural Gas Corp. (500312.BY) and Indian Oil Corp. Ltd.(530965.BY)--have said they will bid for the assets. BP said last week it would sell oil and gas fields in the U.S., Canada and Egypt to Houston-based Apache Corp. for $7 billion as part of the broader divestment process. BP developed its Vietnam gas project through the 1990s and the project started producing gas in the early part of this century. The value of the asset isn't clear: BP said it put more than $1.3 billion of capital investment into the project at start-up, but declined to say what its current value was. -By Jessica Hodgson; Dow Jones Newswires; +44207 8429373; jessica.hodgson@dowjones.com. (END) Dow Jones Newswires July 29, 2010 11:03 ET (15:03 GMT)