SAN ANTONIO, June 4 (UPI) -- Oil refining company Tesoro Corp. announced it closed on a deal to acquire an oil refinery and retail stations in California from British energy company BP.
Tesoro said it closed a deal to acquire a refinery in Carson, California and more than 800 retail stations operated by BP. The company said the cash proceeds include $1.07 billion in assets and $1.35 billion in inventory at the current market value.
The Carson refinery, which started operations in the 1930s, has the capacity to process 266,000 barrels of oil per day. BP said it would use the proceeds from the sale to reshape its U.S. fuels business.
"With the completion of this divestment the strategic refocusing of our U.S. fuels portfolio is essentially complete," Iain Conn, who heads up BP's refining business, said in a statement Monday.
BP has sold some larger assets as its pays off debt associated with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The Federal Trade Commission cleared the sale last week.
Tesoro, which has headquarters in Texas, owns and operates refineries in California that can process 263,000 bpd.
The Environmental Protection Agency said last week Tesoro agreed to pay $1.1 million to settle claims it violated the Clean Air Act at refineries in Alaska, North Dakota, Utah and Washington.
Tesoro was accused of failing to monitor the production of gasoline. Violations of EPA standards could lead to the release of compounds known to cause cancer.
