STATOIL SELLS

Statoil have announced plans to boost profits by selling off some of its assets in the coming years.

Statoil has no timeline or fixed goal for the sales and has focused its strategy on returns over growth, said Lars Christian Bacher, executive vice president of international development and production.

“We are a resource-rich company, we have more assets than we need,” Bacher told Bloomberg reporters at the IHS CERAWeek energy conference in Houston. “We are in no rush. We don’t have to sell this year.”

Oil companies from BP Plc to Royal Dutch Shell Plc have embraced asset sales to shore up finances as costs outpace oil and natural gas prices. International oil companies are seeing little to no output growth despite boosting spending 400 percent in the past decade, Bacher said.

“A lot of companies are spending more and more just to stand still,” he said.

Statoil remains open to buying U.S. assets if falling oil and gas prices put companies in financial distress, Bacher said.

“Our strategy doesn’t say that we will not buy,” he said. “It just says that we will high-grade our portfolio going forward.”