OIL GIANT BG Group has quietly begun looking for a buyer for part of its prized Tanzanian operation.
The FTSE 100 explorer's investment in east Africa has been among its biggest successes. It bought majority stakes in three offshore drilling areas in 2010.
They quickly produced a string of giant discoveries that have the potential to turn Tanzania and neighbouring Mozambique, where more big reservoirs were found, into the world's biggest gas exporting region after Russia and Qatar.
However, to bring the fields into production will cost tens of billions of dollars and BG has started to rein in its spending plans. The company has been hobbled by a series of profit warnings that led to the resignation of its chief executive Chris Finlayson this year.
Interim executive chairman Andrew Gould has yet to find a replacement but is moving ahead with a plan to shrink BG's empire, which stretches from the North Sea to Australia and Brazil.
It is understood the company wants to sell its entire 60% stake in an exploration area in Tanzania known as Block 3, while holding on to Blocks 1 and 4. The company declined to comment.
It is unclear how much BG could pocket from a sale.
Ophir Energy, which shares ownership of all three blocks, last year trousered $1.3bn (£784m) in cash when it sold a 20% stake in the trio to Pavilion Energy, a company owned by Singapore's sovereign wealth fund Temasek.
Some of the world's biggest oil companies, including Shell and BP, have expressed an interest in east Africa's burgeoning gas region in recent years.
BG is downsizing elsewhere. It recently put a handful of fields in the North Sea up for sale with a price tag of more than £1bn. Analysts also expect it to reduce its share of enormous fields in the deepwater off of Brazil as well as its stake in the $20bn Queensland Gas project in Australia.
The latter, a huge complex that draws gas from coal seams and then superchills it to liquid form so it can be exported by ship, has been hit by delays and strike threats.
The Tanzania fields are giant but will be very expensive to develop, partly because the country is bereft of even the most basic infrastructure, including a port, roads and power that would be required for a gas liquefaction plant.
BG owns 60% of all three fields, meaning that it could sell a minority stake to bring in cash, reduce its share of future spending but still be able to keep operational control of the development.
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