BP has raised $5bn in new loans bypledging revenues from oil sales for thefirst time in a bid to bolster its liquidityin the wake of the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The new financing is the latesteffort to diversify its sources of fundingand shore up liquidity, people close tothe process said.
The proceeds will be used forgeneral corporate financing rather than as financing for a $20bn escrowfund to pay for damages caused by the spill.
The UK oil group said it was taking a “prudent approach” tomanaging its balance sheet and its financial liquidity, including providinga liquidity buffer, to ensure that BP has the flexibility to meet all its futurefinancial obligations.
“This form of financing creates further flexibility for BP as analternative form of financing in addition to its more conventional debtfinancing such as corporate lending or project finance structures whereappropriate,” BP said.
The oil company has been strengthening its liquidity levels since thecosts of the spill threatened to spiral.
Since the accident on April 20 that killed 11 workers and led to roughly4.9m barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, BP is estimated to haveput in place about $20bn in short-term bilateral loans and had $7.3bn incash at end of the second quarter.
The company had previously been more reliant on bond marketfunding.
BNP Paribas and Standard Chartered on Monday announced plansto syndicate a $3bn loan due in 2015 backed by crude oil sales from BP’sinterest in a number of licences in offshore Angola held by three subsidiariesof the oil company, the banks said in a statement.
Société Générale and Royal Bank of Scotland are looking to syndicatea $2bn loan backed by crude oil sales from BP’s interest in the AzerispiralChirag-Deepwater Gunashli field,off the shores of Azerbaijan.
The loans, which have beenunderwritten by the banks, areexpected to offer lenders between200 and 300 basis points over theLondon interbank offered rate(Libor)—a rate at which bankslend to each other—people close to the transactions said.
The perceived riskiness of BP as a borrower has fallen in recent weeksafter it plugged the Gulf of Mexico leak.
The cost to investors of protectingagainst a default on BP debt overfive years has fallen to 234 basis points from a record high of more than600bp, according to the data provider Markit.
However, this is still more than quadruple the level before the spill.
