Repsol will review RI operation

Repsol will review RI operation

MADRID (Dow Jones): Grupo Repsol, the Spanish oil and energy group, will review its operations in the U.K., the U.S., Kazakstan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Dubai, the chairman of Repsol was quoted as saying in Tuesday's Financial Times.

While a spokeswoman for Repsol couldn't immediately confirm the article, those comments mirror earlier statements made by Chairman Alfonso Cortina that Latin America, North Africa and Spain are the company's highest-priority regions.

Repsol recently said it would sell non-core assets worth $2.5 billion, both to raise cash and to satisfy anti-trust concerns.

The Spanish company is bidding US$13.44 billion cash for the 85 percent of Argentine company YPF it doesn't already own. If it wins its bid, it will become one of the world's 10 largest oil companies.

Analysts have said that if Repsol's bid is successful the company will most likely sell some of its upstream operations outside these areas. That's because, they said, YPF has far greater exposure to the upstream end of the oil business, which includes oil production and searching for new oil fields.

Repsol, on the other hand, is more involved in the downstream end of the business -- refining crude oil and marketing the final product to clients.

On Monday a spokeswoman for Repsol told Dow Jones Newswires that if its bid is successful it will probably sell YPF's EG3 chain of service stations. The spokeswoman added that EG3 is a "clear example" of the non-core operations which could be sold.