BP figures oil spill costs could climb to $3.5b
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
London, July 12 (Agencies): The cost of clean-up operation in the Gulf of Mexico has climbed to $3.5 billion as progress , BP said Monday, .
It is still too early to estimate the ultimate costs and the British oil group says it has made more than 52,000 payments by Saturday against 105,000 claims and settled $165 million in individual claims alone.
Also, a major effort to put a new cap on the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is making good progress, according to BP.
Work on the cap, which BP hopes will eventually help to capture all of the leaking oil, began Saturday and is expected to be completed within days.
BP shares, meanwhile, continued their recent rally, soaring 5.5 per cent higher to 384.7 pence ($5.76) in early trading on the London Stock Exchange.
BP stock, which was trading at 655 pence before the oil spill on April 20, had briefly fallen below 300 pence last month.
British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that BP was in talks with Apache Corp. about selling 12 billion pounds ($18 billion) in assets including a stake in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field.
The paper also reported that ExxonMobil Corp. had approached U.S. government officials asking if they would object to a takeover bid for BP. None of the companies would comment on the reports.
"We continue to see good near-term upside in the shares, most particularly if the first relief well is successful in capping the Macondo well," Collins Stewart analyst Gordon Gray said Monday in a research note.
The new cap will be aided in containing the leak by the arrival of the Helix Producer, a vessel that should be able to take in about 1 million gallons of crude per day after coming online. The Helix connected to flexible pipes from the well Friday, and crews have been running tests since then.
Ultimately, the plan is to have four vessels collecting oil from the leak with a combined capacity of about 2.5 million to 3.4 million gallons a day - enough to capture all the oil leaking, if federal estimates are right. Getting all the vessels on the task will take about two to three weeks.
The new, tighter cap is not intended to be the permanent solution to the problem.
Relief wells are being dug for the final fix, a "bottom kill" in which heavy drilling mud and cement are pumped in from below the broken wellhead.
BP and government officials have said the relief wells are expected to be completed sometime around mid-August.
It is still too early to estimate the ultimate costs and the British oil group says it has made more than 52,000 payments by Saturday against 105,000 claims and settled $165 million in individual claims alone.
Also, a major effort to put a new cap on the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico is making good progress, according to BP.
Work on the cap, which BP hopes will eventually help to capture all of the leaking oil, began Saturday and is expected to be completed within days.
BP shares, meanwhile, continued their recent rally, soaring 5.5 per cent higher to 384.7 pence ($5.76) in early trading on the London Stock Exchange.
BP stock, which was trading at 655 pence before the oil spill on April 20, had briefly fallen below 300 pence last month.
British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that BP was in talks with Apache Corp. about selling 12 billion pounds ($18 billion) in assets including a stake in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay field.
The paper also reported that ExxonMobil Corp. had approached U.S. government officials asking if they would object to a takeover bid for BP. None of the companies would comment on the reports.
"We continue to see good near-term upside in the shares, most particularly if the first relief well is successful in capping the Macondo well," Collins Stewart analyst Gordon Gray said Monday in a research note.
The new cap will be aided in containing the leak by the arrival of the Helix Producer, a vessel that should be able to take in about 1 million gallons of crude per day after coming online. The Helix connected to flexible pipes from the well Friday, and crews have been running tests since then.
Ultimately, the plan is to have four vessels collecting oil from the leak with a combined capacity of about 2.5 million to 3.4 million gallons a day - enough to capture all the oil leaking, if federal estimates are right. Getting all the vessels on the task will take about two to three weeks.
The new, tighter cap is not intended to be the permanent solution to the problem.
Relief wells are being dug for the final fix, a "bottom kill" in which heavy drilling mud and cement are pumped in from below the broken wellhead.
BP and government officials have said the relief wells are expected to be completed sometime around mid-August.