The Alaskan Oil Pipeline closed down yesterday for a routine maintenance, as one notable oil spill related to that line is still being dealt with, and a more recent smaller spill is being managed, we hope.
And amid this news, there are rumblings that BP, which owns 46% of the company that runs the pipeline, may be selling out and moving on.
I read that news as BP selling off petroleum leases rather than selling the pipeline operations. If they do sell leases it will be easiest to sell to the smallest lease holder in the area; otherwise whoever they sell to will have to dispose of some of their leases to comply with rules limiting a single entity’s number of leases. Such rules were meant to prevent domination by another Standard Oil.