Oil and petrochemicals company BP in June completed the sale of its Carson, California, refinery and related logistics and marketing assets in the region to independent refiner and marketer of petroleum products Tesoro for about $2.4-billion as part of a plan to reshape BP’s US fuels business.

Cash proceeds from the sale include $1.075-billion for assets and an estimated $1.35-billion primarily for inventory at market value and other working capital.

“With the completion of this divestment, the strategic refocusing of our US fuels portfolio is essentially complete,” says BP global refining and marketing business CE Iain Conn.

He adds that BP’s US fuels business is now anchored around three highly sophisticated northern refineries, which are crude feedstock-advantaged and tied to strong marketing businesses.

BP will continue to maintain a number of business interests in California, including a large Arco retail and logistics presence that includes about 270 retail sites in the northern part of the state.

The company will also continue the distribution and marketing of lubricants through its Castrol brand and remain active in the California natural gas and power sector.

“California remains an important state for us and we remain committed to supplying our customers in Northern California and the rest of the Pacific Northwest with the high-quality fuels they depend on,” says BP Northwest fuels value chain president Jeff Pitzer.

“We recently upgraded our Cherry Point, Washington, refinery to produce cleaner-burning diesel fuel and are building a new rail terminal at the plant to take advantage of growing supplies of domestically produced crude oil,” he notes.

In addition to marketing conventional fuels and lubricants in the state, BP will also continue to support the development of renewable-energy sources in the state through its Global Biofuels Technology Center, in San Diego, and the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of Califiornia, Berkeley.

While the sale included BP’s Arco retail brand rights, BP has exclusively licensed those rights from Tesoro for northern California, Oregon and Washington.

BP retains ownership of the con- venience store brand and has franchised it to Tesoro for use in the Southwest.