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.

all profit now banked, last tranche at 412.95 ...... sp arguably getting a bit o'heated, but what a profitable few days that has been ...... shall now just keep watching and may buy back in at some time

Time to push the stop loss close and sit back and enjoy the ride - HOLD rather then Sell IMO

Cynic you sound like the song ok cokey in out, in out shake it all about.

Well done, chock dee

BP Needs New Leaders to Counter Bids

Speculators piled into BP shares Monday, sending the stock up more than 9% in London. Their excitement was based not on the prospects that this week could see a cap successfully fitted on the leaking well but on hopes that there may be a bid for the company.

They could be disappointed. Despite the recent battering of the share price, still mired almost 40% below the level it hit before the crisis despite Monday's bounce, BP still has a market capitalization of about 75 billion (about $113 billion). That is less than half that of the mighty ExxonMobil but, with the bid premium that would undoubtedly be demanded, it would be a big mouthful even for that giant.

Put aside the price though and ask what board would possibly countenance a bid for a company facing such uncertainties as BP. The ultimate bill for the Macondo disaster is, as yet, unquantifiable. It would be a brave company that volunteered to take on such unlimited liabilities.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, chairman of BP, speaking at the White House last month.
Any potential bidder would also surely want to wait until the various inquiries into the causes of the oil spill had reported. Was this a one-off occasioned by human error or evidence of the results of rampant cost-cutting that might be expensive to rectify? The first of the U.S. investigations is due to be completed by September. BP's own inquiry, the results of which it intends to make public, should have some preliminary findings to release before the fall with the final report scheduled for October.

In the meantime, the company is seeking to raise cash through asset sales and apparently finding plenty of interest. But the board cannot dismiss the prospect of a bid further down the line. It needs to be asking whether, in that event, it would be well placed to mount a defence and the answer has to be "Not with the current leadership."

Neither the chairman nor the chief executive have acquitted themselves well in this affair. Carl-Henric Svanberg may have been told by his chief executive early on in the affair that his presence in the US was not required. If so, it was advice he should not have heeded. It has left him looking as if he was not up to the job, no matter how he has since tried to reassure investors to the contrary.

As for Tony Hayward, the picture of him stone-walling as he was subjected to a congressional grilling will linger embarrassingly long after the well is capped. This disaster happened on his watch and he is going to have to pay the price, however much he would like the chance to try to stay long enough to redeem his reputation.

BP now has at its helm a couple of lame ducks. This is an unsustainable situation and there seems little point in delaying the action that is required to put it right. There are potential successors close at hand. Paul Anderson, the former chief executive of BHP Billiton, who joined the board as a non-executive director in February, is being talked of as a suitably qualified successor to Mr. Svanberg. Bob Dudley, who had been a contender for the chief executive's role before it was handed to Mr. Hayward, would be a reassuring choice to take over from him now. He has already been charged with over-seeing happenings in the Gulf of Mexico and could continue to do so while wearing the chief executive's hat.

The BP board has much to occupy it at the moment, not least the prospect of legal actions being launched against individual directors. It may argue that it would be premature to make any changes ahead of the results of the inquiries. Yet if a predator were then to come sniffing around the company, it would be too late to change the top team.

There seems little to be gained by not taking action soon and much to be lost.

Take down the ring fence
The U.K.'s Conservative party made an election pledge that the drastic public expenditure cuts to come would leave the National Health Service unscathed. It is continuing to insist that this is the case and that the treasured NHS. would be spared the pain to be inflicted elsewhere. Yet there are clearly savings to be made.

The restructuring that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced, stripping out tiers of bureaucracy and handing muchmore power to general practitioners, should yield significant savings in the longer term, even if there is short-term disruption.

More immediately, the Department of Health itself could surely yield up some sacrifices for the national economic health. Its Web site lists a dizzying array of press officers, media advisors and speech writers. They may each be excellent at their jobs but is it really necessary, in an age of austerity, to have so many people employed in the publicity machine rather than the operating theatre?

Kremlin seeks cash
Perhaps his timing could have been better. Just days after ten Russian spies had been flown out of the U.S., President Dmitry Medvedev decided to make a plea for the U.S. and the European Union to invest more in his country.

"We need special alliances for modernization," said the President in a speech to Russian ambassadors. He listed "Germany, France, Italy, the EU in general and...the United States" as preferred partners.

Tacitly acknowledging that there are some qualms about the business climate in Russia, the president said "We believe in the triumph of law and that we can stamp out corruption...for the success of modernization." But those words may not be sufficient to quell fears of those who are nervous about the strength of property rights in the country or the scale of corruption.

It is to help with the modernization of the country's infrastructure that the president is particularly anxious to secure foreign investment. Perhaps the ten spies would have been more productive for the country had they been acting as investment advisors.

Trying to control the leak .........


live feeds from the Gulf

Live feeds from Skandi ROV2

Subsea operational update:

Using the Discoverer Inspiration, activities to move the capping stack into position are ongoing

For the first 12 hours on July 12 (midnight to noon), approximately 4,055 barrels of oil and 9.5 million cubic feet
of natural gas were flared on the Q4000.

The Helix Producer started operations at 11.35am CDT today

The next update will be provided at 9:00am CDT on July 13, 2010.

Ring #1

Easily the most important of its three initiatives involves attempts to change out a loose-fitting well cap that has captured only a portion of the gushing oil. It'll be replaced by one more tailor-made, and hopefully capable of blocking virtually all of the oil from spewing into the gulf.

Here is a snippet from BP's latest announcement on Tuesday morning...

"For the duration of the test, which will be a minimum of 6 hours and could extend up to 48 hours, ... all sub-sea containment systems ... will be temporarily suspended, effectively shutting in the well. It is expected, although cannot be assured, that no oil will be released to the ocean for the duration of the test. This will not however be an indication that flow from the wellbore has been permanently stopped.

Relief well operations continue throughout this period and remain the sole means to permanently seal and isolate the well."

Fingers crossed then. BP is also adding a third containment vessel; after a couple snags, it should be up and running shortly.
Ring #2

Another of the company's efforts involves attempting to raise capital from sovereign wealth funds in places like Singapore or the Middle East, for what clearly will be a hefty amount of clean-up fees, compensation for Gulf Coast residents, fines, and other charges.

The funds collected may help prevent the likes of ExxonMobil or Royal Dutch Shell (LSE: RDSB) from initiating takeover runs at BP.

In addition, BP apparently is having conversations with several oil companies regarding asset sales. And it appears to be in deeper discussions with another US oil giant Apache regarding the sale of a package of assets worth up to $10 billion, including its Alaska projects. A deal of that size potentially could be announced when BP releases its earnings on July 27.
Ring #3

The third item of importance to BP involves the first formal meeting of the US presidential commission tasked with investigating the spill. BP, of course, is not represented on the commission: No one with an energy or petroleum engineering background is.

The group's agenda will include the Obama administration's deepwater drilling moratorium. The two co-chairmen headed the Environmental Protection Agency under the first President Bush, and have promised to avoid haste in their moratorium discussions.

Any chance of a takeover?

There is a few, though not many companies have the size for it, as the premium has to be high.

Would it be soon?

No change of that, any company with the right sence would do such a thing, untill the total liabities are counted ( not posible at the moment )

Assets - liabilities = 20% discount posible bid price.

Naturally that is my own idea

Bloomberg TV, keeps talking about ..........


Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyansaid the emirate is considering making an investment in BP Plc.

We are still thinking about it, he said in an interview in Abu Dhabi today, when asked about potentially buying a stake in the London-based oil producer. We are looking across the board. We have been partners with BP for years.

No chance of any BP takeover it will not happen.

concur clubby, though a "strategic holding" from the AD boys would no doubt help sentiment

and today's usual is $37.31

lots of profit-taking going on in usa, no doubt fuelled by fear of bad news from the attempted capping, though nothing announced so far ..... if no improvement, then expect BP to open at 400 and probably less

BUT if successful.....

a bit long .....

BP Plc said it will begin pressure tests at its undersea oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico Tuesday afternoon after it placed a new containment cap and seal on the wellhead late Monday, the top official overseeing the spill said.

Retired U.S. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said BP will first shut down two oil-capture vessels and shut three escape routes for crude on the new stack as well as a hydraulic valve inside of it so the test can start.

If the well can sustain up to 9,000 pounds per square inch of pressure for the first six hours of the 48-hour test, the cap could shut off all flow until a relief well kills the leak by mid-August, Allen said.

But if pressures linger for the first six hours at 6,000 psi or less, "we'll know we can't sustain that in the long run," he said.

Either way, BP will have a four-vessel oil-capture system in place by mid-July that can handle up to 80,000 barrels a day, he said. If the cap can shut off all flow, the vessels will be in place as a backup, Allen said.

From the Telegraph (tomorrow's )

BP on brink of capping Gulf of Mexico leak
BP has begun crucial pressure testing on its leaking Gulf of Mexico well, as it makes a bid to capture all the remaining oil gushing into the ocean.

Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary, was on Tuesday supervising the key operation, which involved BP fitting a tight cap over the well. The energy giant's share price rose 3pc to 410.35p on hopes the flow of oil will soon halt completely.

BP's market value fell from 123bn to 56bn after the accident on April 20 that killed 11 men and triggered the leak. It has since bounced back up to 77bn or about 40pc on takeover speculation, talk of investment from the Middle East and on hopes that the leak will be stopped.

BP builds defence in takeover threat Meanwhile, it emerged that Abu Dhabi is still considering whether to invest in BP in a move that could put a firmer backstop on the company's share price.

"We are still thinking about it," Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told Bloomberg News. "We are looking across the board. We have been partners with BP for years."

The developments come as 18 oil and gas companies, including BP, prepare to defend their offshore drilling in Europe at high-level meetings in Brussels on Wednesday.

Gther Oettinger, the European Union energy commissioner, last week called for a ban on new deepwater projects in the North Sea and other oil-rich areas until the triggers of BP's accident are definitely known.

"This can mean de facto a moratorium on new drills until the causes of the accident are known and corrective measures are taken for such frontier operations as the ones carried out by the Deepwater Horizon," he said.

Any strict ban from Europe could signal an end to North Sea oil explorers drilling west of the Shetland Islands. Oil and gas companies will argue at the meeting that these projects are not nearly so deep and ambitious as BP's wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

Norway has instituted a ban on new deepwater drilling until safety reports into the Deepwater Horizon are published, but Britain has decided that its current regulations are adequate.

A spokesman for the International Association of Oil & Gas producers, which will lead the talks on behalf of the industry, said its key message will be that the energy sector is prepared to learn the lessons of Deepwater Horizon once investigations into the accident are complete.

Energy companies have been summoned to see four EU officials Mr Oettinger, Janez Potocnik, commissioner for the environment, Kristalina Georgieva, commissioner for crisis response, and Maria Damanaki, commissioner for maritime affairs as Europe begins belatedly to react to the biggest spill in US history.

Mr Oettinger is also considering asking member states for their right to approve new drilling, taking central supervisory control through Europe.

Separately, BP plans to sell some of its pipeline and oil storage assets for $289m (191m).

Magellan Midstream Partners said it will buy the North American infrastructure assets, including storage for 8m barrels of crude and 100 miles of pipeline.

late last night in NY .....

The British energy giant and U.S. authorities said they were postponing the test that had been scheduled for Tuesday to establish whether the well can withstand the pressure caused by closing the cap at the wellhead.

"We decided that the process may benefit from additional analysis that will be performed tonight and tomorrow," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is overseeing the U.S. response to the spill, said in a statement.

The tests, due to last between six and 48 hours, had been scheduled for late Tuesday on BP's newly installed "capping stack," which has a better seal than the last cap placed on the well and aims to stop oil from spewing out of the failed blowout preventer.

Neither the coast guard nor BP gave any indication about when the tests might now begin.

Integrity tests delayed again -- should start by 04:00 BST 14th July.


Subsea operational update:

The well integrity test has not commenced at this time.
Ramping up of the Helix Producer continues.

For the first 12 hours on July 13 (midnight to noon), approximately 4,090 barrels of oil were collected and approximately 3,885 barrels of oil and 14.5 million cubic feet of natural gas were flared.

The next update will be provided at 9:00am CDT on July 14, 2010.


Updated July 13 at 6:30pm CDT

Lets see what effect it has

edited moneyam