London-based BP plc on Monday said that its estimated oil and gas reserves will not show any material changes when recalculated for submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later this month. However, BP said that the reserves numbers, filed with UK regulators, might differ “somewhat” when they are restated in the SEC filing.

BP issued a statement after an analyst report by Goldman Sachs suggested the producer’s oil and gas numbers would be about 3% lower in U.S. filings compared with its UK Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) reports. BP’s SEC filing will be in a 20-F document, and BP will reconcile reserves currently booked under British accounting rules with U.S. standards, which are slightly more stringent.

Investors, analysts and regulators have been heavily scrutinizing producers’ proved and probable reserves numbers this year following a scandal at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, which has revised its oil and gas reserves downward four times this year. El Paso Corp. also has lowered its reserves numbers by about 40% since the beginning of the year, and a couple of other U.S.-based producers have announced reserves revisions.

“We are confident in the reserves numbers that were booked in our UK annual report, and we are confident that these numbers are compliant with SEC regulations in all material respects,” BP said in a statement. In its 2003 annual report, BP listed its proved and probable reserves at 18.3 billion boe.

In its investor report, Goldman Sachs said BP’s reserves estimate for the SEC could be lower than the UK report. “We don’t view either base of accounting as being superior to the other,” the report noted. “They are simply different.” It said that a 3% difference would probably have no financial impact on BP, but it could affect investor sentiment because of Shell’s and El Paso’s recent news. “The SEC reserve number could be lower than the SORP number reported for 2003,” said the report, but anything above 3% is “unlikely.”

Goldman Sachs noted that the major difference between U.S. and UK regulations concerns the rules on how technology is used to estimate reserves. “In this respect, SORP may be considered a more up to date framework and one which potentially allows a higher initial reserve estimate than would be arrived at under SEC,” said the report.

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