OREANDA-NEWS. BP announced that it expects to complete the sale of its Carson Refinery and Southwest U.S. retail assets to Tesoro Corporation in the second quarter of this year now that the transaction has received U.S. Federal Trade Commission clearance.

Under the terms of the deal announced in August 2012, the assets include BP’s Carson, California refinery and related logistics and marketing assets in the region. Since that time, BP and Tesoro have been providing information to regulatory authorities to enable the parties to gain approval to complete the transaction for proceeds of approximately USD 2.5 billion.

“With FTC clearance, we have taken a significant step closer to completion of this sale and to the strategic refocusing of our U.S. fuels portfolio,” said Iain Conn, chief executive of BP’s global refining and marketing business. “I am very proud of the team’s work to achieve clearance of the sale and for consistently safe and high quality operations throughout the process. BP’s future U.S. fuels business soon will be firmly rooted around three, highly sophisticated northern refineries, which are crude feedstock-advantaged, and tied to strong marketing businesses.”