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Deepwater Horizon: BP shares take another battering

bp share.bmpAlready heavily hurt by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP’s share price took an additional pummelling today.

At one point the company’s shares were trading below 300p, a 14-year low. They have since recovered to 307p, at the time of writing.

The main driver seems to be speculation over the eventual cost of cleaning up and compensating after the leak from the Deepwater Horizon accident is finally shut off. BP said today that the cost of spill to date had reached $2.35 billion. It has also set aside $20bn to pay expected compensation claims.

However, a spokesman has denied rumours that the company is seeking bankruptcy protection (Reuters).

In other news that is unlikely to boost the company’s shares, Reuters also reports that:

The US government is reviewing BP Plc’s Alaska drilling plans after a report that the company’s project did not receive proper environmental oversight, a senior official said on Thursday. “We are looking into the issue right now,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee hearing when asked about the reports about BP’s Liberty project, located on a man-made island in the Beaufort Sea about 15 miles east of Prudhoe Bay.

Graph source: Yahoo finance.

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