Royal Dutch Shell said on December 10 that it had agreed to sell a group of gas fields in south Texas to OXY USA, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum Corp., for about 1.8 billion dollars (1.4 billion euros). The sale, effective from January 01, 2011, "is a further step in Shell's ongoing portfolio restructuring and focus on capital efficiency", the group said in a statement.
The transaction forms part of a restructuring programme which the Anglo-Dutch company hopes will raise between seven billion and eight billion dollars in 2010 and 2011.