The oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has damaged BP's reputation will they manage to avoid a share collapse to 350p.?



472p to buy this morning.

Clubby does not drink puffter's drinks like gin, he drinks Bud

Have you checked the oil, and tyres on the transit Cynic.

From the Telegraph..........

China could swoop on $9bn of BP's assets in South America, as the oil giant looks to raise money to pay for its giant Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The British energy major, whose share price rose 3pc yesterday, is understood to be in talks with the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) about selling its 60pc stake in Pan America. BP is looking to sell $10bn of non-core exploration and production assets, so this potential disposal would mean it would almost hit this target in a single transaction

From Market report this morning .........

Troubled oil producer BP slipped 3.1p at 324.85p on reports it is to off-load South American assets to China to raise 9bn.

Only a blip

Blue now up up and away.

Come on BP

Down again. UP down, up down, sounds like my Mrs

It sure does.

;-)

Hey, Andy Murray is playing Nadal now.

Go on Nadal, I can't stand that Murray he has the personality of a turd.

but he's almost a white man and nadal a damned foreigner!
mustn't call him a spic or i'll get banned!!

cynic why are you so determined to bring your racist views into this thread?

get a life! ..... (a) you have not followed the plot with clubby and (b) you cannot surely think i was being serious????????????? ............ well obviously you very stupidly did

Misery guts Murry mint and his ugly lesbian looking mother have the same sad face.

shame on you cynic....;))

thanks clubby - lol!
have you noticed that the gf looks just like the mother though prettier?

I like Nadel he is a good looking guy.

and Murry sounds like Sean Connery so boring.

Murray like 007 I don't think so my boy. More like a hedge fund manager, or a trader.

Cynic. A pig, or if you live in Wales a sheep, is better looking than the dyke mother.

Hi guys, this is a BP thread, I thought there was already another threat for talking nonsence.

Just in case you were not in touch with today's events Christmas (1) won the Wimbledon 2010

Wimbledon
Finals: Rafael Nadal (2) def Tomas Berdych (12) 6-3 7-5 6-4


(1) Nadal ( catalan ) = Navidad ( spanish )= Christmas ( english )

From the Guardian .......

Relief well drill is only days away from leaking oil pipe
The first of two relief wells is within striking distance of the Macondo, about 15ft (4.5m) away from the pipe

After 76 days, 190 million gallons of oil, and a $22.5bn (15bn) clean-up and compensation bill so far, BP is poised to plug its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico. Drilling engineers have only one chance to get it right.

One wrong move as engineers break through the cement and steel pipe of the Macondo well could increase the torrent of oil into the Gulf. In the worst case scenario, it could even trigger a blow-out in the relief well.

"They pretty much have one shot," said Wayne Pennington, the chair of geophysical engineering at Michigan Tech University. "Once they hit it and they try to kill it they really just have that one chance."

Pennington and other experts agree the chances of such a disaster are remote. But it cannot be ruled out entirely as BP moves into the most delicate phase of its relief well operation. Nor can the prospect of unexpected delays, due to technical glitches or forecasts for a very active hurricane season.

For now though, the operation is about a week ahead of schedule.

The first of two relief wells is within striking distance of the Macondo, about 15ft (4.5m) away from the pipe and 600ft or so (200m) above the reservoir, after weeks of drilling. The second, ordered by the Obama administration as a safety back-up, is some weeks behind.

But BP and the administration were wary of predicting that the well would be finished sooner than expected.

"There is a chance a slight chance they could nick the wellbore," Thad Allen, the coast guard commander, said. "We shouldn't come off that mid-August date until we know they've actually gone through" the leaking well, he told a White House briefing.

The most important thing is establishing a clear connection with the Macondo so they can begin pumping in the heavy drilling mud according to Mark Proegler, a BP spokesman. A nick risks starting a new small leak or possibly even a collapse of a section of the pipe given that it was damaged in the explosion in ways still not fully understood.

Those challenges are still some days away as BP continues to find the optimal point to break into the well, a process known as ranging. "We have many days ahead of us of ranging runs," said Proegler. The process involves lowering a device down the relief well that bounces electromagnetic waves through the rock to try to measure the distance to the metal pipe of the Macondo, a target barely seven inches (18mm) in diameter.

"They are homing in on that metal or iron signal from the first well," said Julius Langlinais, a former petroleum engineer and professor at Louisiana State University.

The search for the Macondo would go faster if BP were using measurement while drilling tools, whereby sensors installed in the drill string send the appropriate readings back to the surface, said Langlinais. However, that equipment is hugely expensive. Instead, BP is relying on a process that involves swapping the drill bit for the line carrying the sensor.

"They have to pull the drill string out of the well and lower down this sensitive device that looks for magnetic field variations and from that they can tell where the casing of the well is," Pennington said. Then engineers remove the device, replace the drill string and begin all over again. Each shift can take up to two days.

At some point though the engineers will arrive at the right spot on the pipe somewhere between the reservoir and the leak. They will then stop and install metal casing in the relief well, using cement to secure it in the rock.

The intercept could be complicated if it turns out that the oil is flowing around the pipe, between the pipe and the cement of the well bore.

Engineers also have to be spot-on in their calculations as to how much drilling mud or pressure to exert on the well to choke it off. A vessel containing 44,000 gallons of mud is on standby.

The mud must be viscous enough to flow down the pipe but also dense enough to slow down the oil bubbling up from below.

That balance will be crucial to gaining control over the well, so that the flow of oil is checked without having to continuously pump in more mud.

"You get a dense enough mud and a tall enough column in that flow path, and the reservoir can't flow any more. It can't buck the pressure," said Darryl Bourgoyne, a petroleum engineer at Louisiana State University.

Then, if all has gone according to plan, operators will install a cement plug, sealing off the well for good.

From the Guardian -- Sunday 4 July 2010 .......

Kuwait Investment Office in talks to raise BP stake
Share sale to Middle East investor could raise 6bn
Bigger KIO holding would block rival bids

BP is holding talks with the Kuwait Investment Office about taking a much larger stake of the oil company in an effort to ward off a takeover by a foreign rival, as well as raising additional funds.

The Middle East sovereign wealth fund is a significant shareholder, with a 1.75% stake, but BP would like it to increase its share, perhaps to as much as 10%.

The move would raise valuable cash, about 6bn, that BP needs to cope with the mounting liabilities from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which some estimate could eventually reach $70bn (58bn).

A big strategic investor would also make it harder for a rival such as ExxonMobil of the US or China National Offshore Oil Company to win control of BP through a hostile bid. A number of potential bidders are rumoured to be circling the company to take advantage of its weakened state.

Kuwait is one of a number of Middle East sovereign wealth funds in discussions with the British-based energy group, whose share price has been halved by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

BP is targeting financial investors from Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Qatar in the Middle East because they understand the oil industry but are unlikely to interfere with the operational side of BP's business. They would also be seen as acceptable "neutral" investors in Washington and not create the kind of political difficulties associated with sovereign wealth funds from other parts of the world.

BP declined to comment but well placed sources told the Guardian that the company was "talking to a variety of current and potential investors in the Middle East." The KIO is the City branch of the Kuwait Investment Authority, the state-controlled wealth fund.

BP's share price rose strongly last week after a provocative equity research note from City banker, JP Morgan Cazenove, mooted who may buy BP.

The British company has already started talks with a variety of rivals about selling off assets to help bolster its financial position. CNOOC is interested in the purchase of Argentinian gas businesses partly owned by BP. Its Russian joint venture TNK-BP has also opened talks about buying BP assets outside Russia.

The company is hoping to have some firm sales to announce before 27 July when it must release its first half financial results and give a strategic update about the scale of liabilities faced in America.

The idea of bringing in a strategic investor was last seen when Barclays Bank ran into trouble. Barclays avoided a government bailout by raising 7.3bn from the state investment funds of Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

This is seen as a potential model for BP at a time when management urgently needs to be shown to be making progress.

Chief executive Tony Hayward, who has said in the past his job is on the line, has been seeing City investors over the last two weeks but is said to be reassured by the strong level of support he was given.

The FT on Saturday claimed some shareholders were expecting him or more likely the chairman, Carl-Henric Svandberg, to go.

Kuwait emerged as a leading BP shareholder in 1997 in controversial circumstances. It built up a near 22% holding in the wake of the disastrous sale of a tranche of BP shares by the UK government on the day of the "Black Monday" stock market collapse, when few other investors were willing to buy. But the relief soon turned to discomfort when the purchase was referred to Britain's competition authorities, which ordered Kuwait to reduce its stake to less than 10% within 12 months.