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Last updated: July 5 2010 18:38
BP is running out of options. With at least a month to go before the relief well to stop the leak in the Gulf of Mexico is completed, and with the cost of the clean-up above $3bn, boosting its balance sheet is more important than ever. If the relief well fails, BP is doomed. But the likelihood of a failure should be remote: relief wells usually work.
That does not lessen BPs strategic dilemma, however. How urgent is its need for cash and how should it be raised? BP has earmarked $10bn of disposals, but these take time. Credit markets put up a keep out sign on June 23, when Fitch Ratings cut BPs credit rating from double A to triple B. One reason for this downgrade was that the balance of costs that BP faces is skewed to the near term. In any case, BPs debt is trading in even more speculative territory, so debt funding is not realistic. The only other option is to raise equity.
BPs market value has collapsed since the Deepwater Horizon accident on April 20. That alone must have strategic investors eyeing its assets. Seeking an investor such as a sovereign wealth fund, along the lines of what Barclays did early in the global financial crisis, is one solution and one that BP can control. Oil-hungry China must be one source perhaps including a long-term supply agreement.
An alternative is to woo a Middle Eastern investor. In spite of their overexposure to oil, they may be persuaded to take advantage of a one-off opportunity. No wonder Libyas senior oil official has hinted at such a move. Since desperate times call for desperate measures, Tony Hayward, BPs chief executive, and Carl-Henric Svanberg, its chairman, need to start thinking the previously unthinkable.