4:20 p.m. | Updated The New York Times’s Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper provide more details about BP’s $20 billion claims fund.

BP announced Wednesday afternoon that it was suspending its dividend payments for the rest of the year because of the costs involved in setting up a $20 billion fund to pay for damage claims from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company also said it planned to sell about $10 billion in assets over the next 12 months to raise cash. It did not disclose what assets it would be selling.

BP’s chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, disclosed the dividend suspension after meeting with President Obama at the White House to discuss how to deal with the oil spill. The company, in a statement, said its board would consider restoring dividend payments in 2011 after it reviews its fourth-quarter 2010 results.

By that time, BP said, the board “expects to have a clearer picture of the longer-term impact of the Deepwater Horizon incident.”

BP said its board reviewed its dividend policy as a result of its agreement to set up the $20 billion claims fund and decided that it was “right and prudent” to suspend payments.

“Notwithstanding BP’s strong financial and asset position,” the company said, “the current circumstances require the board to be prudent and it has therefore decided to cancel the previously declared first quarter dividend scheduled for payment on 21st June, and that no interim dividends will be declared in respect of the second and third quarters of 2010.”

In its statement, BP provided details of the $20 billion claims fund that it would set up over the next three and a half years, and the company confirmed that Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, would oversee the fund.

BP said it would initially make payments to the fund of $3 billion in the third quarter and $2 billion in the fourth quarter. These would be followed by payments of $1.25 billion in each of the following quarters until a total of $20 billion has been paid to the fund.

The company reserved the right to reclaim any money that might be left in the fund after all claims are paid. But it did acknowledge that the $20 billion fund “does not represent a cap on BP liabilities.”

After meeting with President Obama, Mr. Svanberg apologized “to the American people” for the disaster and said that BP would “look after the people affected, and we will repair the damage to this region and the economy.”

Wall Street reacted calmly to BP’s decision to suspend its dividend and set up the $20 billion claims fund. BP’s American depository receipts closed up 45 cents, at $31.85, on the New York Stock Exchange.

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