French oil giant Total is understood to be preparing for the sale of UK North Sea assets worth more than £1.3 billion.
Total will offload a third of its 60% stake in the Laggan-Tormore fields west of Shetland, news agency Reuters reported, citing banking and industry sources.
The company also intends to divest stakes in a number of smaller fields bought from Maersk Oil earlier this year, including Golden Eagle, Dumbarton, Bruce and Keith, the report said.
Total did not respond to requests for comment.
Reuters said Bank of America Merrill Lynch would manage Total’s sale of a 20% working interest in Laggan-Tormore, with Lambert Energy in charge of divesting the other assets.
Last week, US major Chevron revealed it would sell its entire central North Sea portfolio, while ConocoPhillips struck a deal to reduce its stake in the Clair field.
Analysts said Chevron’s move showed the UK North Sea was struggling to compete globally, despite huge cost reductions during the downturn.
Total’s UK business achieved first gas from the 90,000 barrels-a-day Laggan-Tormore project in February 2016.
It followed that milestone with the start-up of the Edradour and Glenlivet fields in August 2017, and celebrated a switch to UK North Sea offices in Westhill, near Aberdeen, in December.
The company’s £5.8bn acquisition of Maersk Oil, completed in March, made it the second largest operator in the North Sea, with an anticipated output of 500,000 barrels per day by 2020.
It also handed Total a 49.99% operated stake in one of the UK’s biggest offshore gas developments, the Culzean field, which is expected to come online next year.
Total later said it would have to lay off about 300 workers in the north-east as part of the integration with Maersk Oil.
The acquisition also means Total has a number of different rotas across its sites and the company wants to introduce a uniform system.
But plans to switch rotas from two weeks on, three weeks off to three on, three off have raised the prospect of industrial action.
Last week, the Unite union said workers on the Alwyn, Dunbar and Elgin platforms would down tools in a series of 24-hour and 12-hour strikes.
Workers at Total’s Shetland gas plant have also voted in favour of industrial action.