BP in talks 'to sell Texas City refinery'

British energy giant BP is in talks to sell its Texas City refinery to US-based Marathon Petroleum as part of plans to cover costs for the 2010 oil spill disaster, the FT reported on Wednesday. The Financial Times, which cited a source familiar with the matter, said the companies had been in talks for months over a transaction that could raise up to $2.5 billion (1.9 billion euros). However, the paper added that it was "unclear" if a deal could be reached over the Texas City facility, which suffered a deadly explosion in 2005 that killed 15 workers and sparked safety concerns across BP's US operations. The British energy giant has already stated that it would sell $38 billion of assets by the end of 2013 to help pay the clean-up bill and compensation costs from the devastating US Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. Last month, BP announced a deal to sell its Carson refinery in California to US peer Tesoro Corporation for $2.5 billion. BP's fortunes were ravaged two years ago by an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers, sent millions of barrels of oil spewing into the sea. The blast on April 20, 2010, sparked what was been widely acknowledged to be the worst environmental catastrophe in US history. In February 2011, the group said it would sell off two major US refineries as part of a restructuring to shift its focus away from the United States and to meet the clean-up bill from the disaster.