Oil company has sold assets worth more than $40bn to pay for fines and liabilities from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill

BP is selling off a stake in two promising discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico and transferring their operation to a US group in its latest attempt to raise cash and reduce its exposure to challenging deep-water drilling risks.

The company, which is preparing to reveal a huge slide in final quarter profits next week, is disposing of half its holding in the Gila and Tiber fields to Chevron.

A second US company, ConocoPhillips, is also increasing its involvement in the finds which have been made around ultra deep reservoirs in what BP describes as “new frontiers” of the Gulf.

BP declined to say how much it would raise from the transaction but has already sold more than $40bn of assets to pay for fines and other liabilities from the disastrous Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.

Combining the technical strengths and financial resources of these three companies will provide greater efficiency through scale, reduce subsurface risk and increase the likelihood of achieving a future commercial development, said BP.

“It will allow us to manage and maintain capital discipline by sharing development costs. And transferring operatorship of these assets to Chevron will allow BP to increase our focus on maximizing production at our four existing producing hubs in the Gulf, each of which is still in the early stages of development,” said Richard Morrison, president of BP’s Gulf of Mexico business.

BP is still waiting to hear what the final cost will be of the Deepwater Horizon accident but it recently won a court ruling that a fine under the clean water act would be capped at $13.7bn, not the worst case scenario of $18bn.

But the company’s reputation remains tarnished and experts say it is trying to limit any further damage that could be inflicted if there were any problems at Tiber and Gila. Meanwhile, lower global oil prices are expected to mean BP reporting profits next week of around $1.57bn for the final quarter of 2014, compared to $2.8bn in the last three months of 2013.