Report: BP Plc (ADR) (BP) Considering Exiting Canadian Oil Sands Projects

BP Plc (NYSE:BP) is up 0.20% or $0.10 to $34.24 on April 20, amid news that the oil giant is considering the sale of three oil sands projects in Canada, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter. BP currently owns 50% of each of Pike and Sunrise, and is a majority owner of Terre de Grace — the three assets in the spotlight of the rumor. While BP Plc (NYSE:BP) had reportedly discussed the sale with advisers, no decision has been made according to the anonymous sources. BP may deploy the capital raised in the sale to invest into more attractive regions such as the Permian Basin in the United States.

The news follows another Reuters report of the same situation, only with Chevron Corp. (NYSE:CVX) in the spotlight, highlighting the sentiment of oil companies over low crude prices and the high-capital requirement to get a project off the ground in the oil sands in Canada.

Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock.com

Kanok Sulaiman/Shutterstock.com

What Does The Smart Money Sentiment Say?

The Smart Money sentiment is bearish over shares of the oil giant by the end of Q4 2016. Out of the 742 funds we track at Insider Monkey, only 26 funds held shares in BP valued at $1.2 billion in Q4, compared to 30 funds in Q3 with shares valued at $1.1 billion.

At Insider Monkey, we’ve developed an investment strategy that has delivered market-beating returns over the past 12 months. Our strategy identifies the 100 best-performing funds of the previous quarter from among the collection of 700+ successful funds that we track in our database, which we accomplish using our returns methodology. We then study the portfolios of those 100 funds using the latest 13F data to uncover the 30 most popular mid-cap stocks (market caps of between $1 billion and $10 billion) among them to hold until the next filing period. This strategy delivered 39.7% gains over the past 12 months and outperformed the 24.1% gain enjoyed by the S&P 500 ETFs. Our enhanced small-cap hedge fund strategy returned more than 45% over the last 12 months and outperformed SPY by more than 30 percentage points over the last 4.5 years (see details here).

The Bottom Line

BP Plc (NYSE:BP) is mildly up on the charts following a Reuters report that the oil giant is considering the sale of three of its oil sands projects in Canada. For further reading, here are 8 countries that produce the most crude oil in the world.

Follow B P Plc (NYSE:BP)

Disclosure: none.