Assets may be sold for merger OK

LOS ANGELES -- Atlantic Richfield Co. plans to sell oil pipelines, connections and storage tanks near Cushing, Okla., to eliminate one obstacle of its proposed $30 billion buyout by BP Amoco Plc.

The Federal Trade Commission last week sued to block the merger, partly because of concerns that with Arco, BP Amoco would be able to manipulate the price of the most commonly traded U.S. oil futures contract, at Cushing, Okla. Arco earned pretax profit of about $40 million to $50 million a year from the Cushing assets, a person familiar with the situation told Bloomberg News.

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