Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman and DLA Piper have picked up advisory roles as San Antonio-based refiner Tesoro Corporation agreed to pay nearly $2.5bn (£1.59bn) in cash to acquire the Southern California refining and marketing business of oil giant BP in an effort to expand its West Coast footprint, writes The Am Law Daily.

Tesoro is paying $1.18bn (£752m) for the assets changing hands, plus another $1.3bn (£828m) based on the value of the plant’s inventory at the time of the deal’s closing, which is expected before mid-2013. The deal will also see Tesoro acquire roughly 800 retail gas stations in California, Nevada, and Arizona, as well as a logistics system and assets that Tesoro said it plans to spin off to its master limited partnership, Tesoro Logistics, within a year of closing the deal with BP.