HOUSTON (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum Corp is soliciting bids for oil and gas properties in Wyoming and Colorado that it acquired when it purchased Anadarko Petroleum, hoping the assets will fetch up to $700 million, according to people familiar with the matter.
Occidental offered about 200,000 acres in the Denver-Julesburg Basin of Wyoming and Colorado that produce $66 million a year in cash flow, mostly in mineral royalties, according to marketing documents.
RBC Capital Markets is handling the sale, with bids due next month.
Occidental separately has offered its own Midland, Texas, campus, according to a real estate listing bit.ly/2O1vzIU. The facility was valued at $45.7 million last year, according to county tax records. Spokeswoman Melissa Schoeb said Occidental plans to move its Midland staff to offices Anadarko was building prior to the acquisition. She declined to comment on the sale of Wyoming and Colorado assets.
The two are among a string of smaller asset sales to further reduce the debt load of about $40 billion that Occidental took on with the Anadarko purchase. It has raised about $10 billion so far through sales of properties including a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique and production in Africa.
Still, Occidental recently put on hold plans to divest its Western Midstream Partners pipeline unit after failing to attract an attractive offer. It also needs the cash the unit generates, analysts said.
“Small assets like non-O&G minerals via (Anadarko), longer dated Permian acreage, and real estate carve offs may help,” analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt wrote in a note on Monday. “But we
