CENTRICA, the £9.6 billion utility, is considering the sale of OneTel, its telecoms arm, after receiving several approaches from potential buyers.

A disposal would mark another strategic retreat by the company back to its core British Gas business.

The company sold AA, its motoring-services arm, to a private-equity consortium last year. In doing so it effectively abandoned its ambition of turning itself into a multi-utility. But so far Sir Roy Gardner, Centrica’s chief executive and his chairman Roger Carr, have resisted selling OneTel. This business, which is worth several hundred million pounds, supplies fixed-line and mobile telephone services to 1m customers. Last year it contributed £16m of operating profits on sales of £218m.

On Friday Centrica issued a profit downgrade ahead of announcing its half-year results. The gas and electricity supplier said it had been hit by spiralling energy prices in global markets. To counter this, it said British Gas is to raise energy prices by 14.2%, affecting 18m British households.

Speculation has mounted that Centrica has been placed on the shopping list of a number of heavyweight European rivals, including Gaz de France; RWE, the German owner of Npower; and the Russian state-controlled utility Gazprom.

It emerged late last week that Petronas, the Malaysian state energy company, has built up a 4% stake in Centrica. Petronas described the stake as a long-term supportive investment and said that at the moment it had no intention of buying more shares.

Analysts said Petronas is keen to grow its share of the gas market outside Asia and it already has a supply agreement with Centrica.

Centrica has already held preliminary merger talks with the Norwegian utility Norsk Hydro to create a £20 billion international energy giant. The negotiations were aborted amid concerns that a deal would be politically unacceptable ahead of the Norwegian parliamentary election this autumn.

The recent news that Centrica’s rival, Scottish Power, has become the subject of a potential takeover bid from the German group Eon will step up the pressure on Gardner to find a partner.

Gardner is thought to be keen to leave Centrica some time next year, but analysts say that before he leaves he wants to tie up a deal that will secure long-term upstream gas reserves for the company.

This week, RWE will attempt to maximise Centrica’s discomfort over increasing its prices at British Gas.

It is to launch a price promise to its customers called “Gas Guardian”, backed by a multi-million pound marketing campaign.

The tariff will peg Npower’s gas price to the previous British Gas rate, which Npower will claim will allow its customers to be protected from rising gas prices until 2007.

John Caudwell, billionaire owner of the Phones 4U retail chain, has kicked off the sale of his fixed-line telecoms business, Caudwell Communications, which operates in the residential market as Homecall. It is set to fetch up to £100m.

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