Carlyle sees buyers market as oil majors sell $300 bln of assets

By Dmitry Zhdannikov and Silvia Antonioli

LAUSANNE, April 2 (Reuters) - Oil majors have put up forsale assets worth more than $300 billion and more could come asshareholders press for lower capital expenditure and higherdividends, according to a major private equity player investingin energy.

Marcel van Poecke, managing director at private equity giantCarlyle's fund International Energy Partners, whichspecialises on European downstream investments, told aconference he saw the biggest buyers' market of his career asoil majors continue splitting oil production from refining.

"I've been in this business for 25-30 years. I've never seenthe market with so many good assets for sale," he told the FTCommodities Summit.

Earlier this year, Carlyle made a surprise foray intoEurope's struggling refining sector by teaming up with Swisstrading house Vitol to co-own refining, storage anddistribution assets in Switzerland and Germany.

Van Poecke said he saw other private equity firms repeatingsuch deals around the world as more majors will follow in thefootsteps of U.S. firms ConocoPhillips, Murphy Oil and Hess Corp, which have either spun offrefining or are undergoing business restructuring.

"Investors say 'We don't need you to be an integratedcompany' ...They say: 'We can buy BP for upstream andValero for downstream. And we will create our own oilcompany'," said Van Poecke.

Companies such as BP and Royal Dutch Shell haveembarked on a capital diet after years of record spending onhuge offshore or U.S. shale projects.

They are now promising to return more money to shareholdersthrough dividends and share buy-backs.

BP is selling assets worth around $40 billion and Shellplans to sell some $15 billion worth of assets.

"It is the buyers' market," said Van Poecke. (Reporting by Dmitry Zhdannikov; editing by Jason Neely)