BP is apparently considering the $1 billion sale of some of its assets in the North Sea as it tries to cover cleanup costs from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The company's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico exploded in April, leading to the most massive oil spill in U.S. history.
The Obama administration will temporarily ban the sale of new offshore oil drilling leases in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic coast, Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar said Wednesday, a policy change made in response to lessons learned from BP's horrific Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Earlier Friday in London trading, shares of BP gained on rumors the largest oil company in the world, Exxon Mobil, is considering a bid for the oil company responsible for the largest oil spill in the U.S., Reuters reported.
The $20 billion fund established to compensate victims of BP's Gulf oil spill has been criticized for processing claims too slowly. Kenneth Feinberg responded to those accusations Saturday, and said was implementing changes to make payments more quickly, and more generous.
BP's (BP) relief well reached intercepted the Macondo well, putting engineers in a position to permanently plug the well that spewed out millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The relief well intercepted the Macondo well late last night, Reuters reported. The next step will be to pour in cement near the bottom of the well, some 2.5 miles below the seabed.
Nearly five months since the start of the massive BP oil spill, many questions are still unanswered. More than 200 million gallons of oil were released between April and August, and now a team of marine scientists thinks they know where a large portion of the oil from the BP spill has gone.
BP said Friday that the Deepwater Horizon rig's blowout preventer, which failed to prevent oil from the Macondo well from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico, has been removed from atop the well.
BP claims it stopped using oil dispersants more than a month ago, and stopped using a particularly toxic compound, Corexit 9527, back in May. So why is analytical chemist Bob Naman still finding evidence of it in the Gulf?
Kenneth Feinberg, who was jointly selected to be the new oil spill claims czar by the White House and BP, spent his first official day on the job Monday taking heat over the guidelines he has established for claims against the fund BP set up for victims of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
BP has been ordered to retrieve the section of pipe that has the blowout preventer, the part that failed and helped to cause the explosion that wrecked the Deepwater Horizon rig, which of course triggered the largest oil leak in U.S. history.
BP, which needs to raise funds to help clean up the worst oil spill in U.S. history, said Tuesday it will sell its operations in Colombia for $1.9 billion to Ecopetrol and the Canadian company Talisman. Ecopetrol is the largest oil company in Colombia.
At a total of nearly 5 million barrels, the spill from BP ruptured Macondo well easily outstrips the previous record of 3.3 million barrels released into the Bay of Campeche by Mexico's Ixtoc I rig in 1979.
BP and the government will begin a series of tests Monday evening to determine whether the damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico is structurally sound enough to attempt a plan that would seal it once and for all.
Crews working to plug BP's ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico aim to begin an operation to pour mud and cement into the well by Monday evening, a step toward fixing the leak permanently.
Will there even be a BP as we now know it? The answers rest on several variables, most notably: continued asset sales, future litigation and efforts to restore the company's now-tattered public image. Its problems are only beginning.
BP's board appears to be saying yes. They're betting the American who has become the face of BP's Gulf Oil spill cleanup has the right stuff to not only end that nightmare but to lead an overhaul of BP's corporate culture to one that stresses safety as well profits.
Investors got an early jump on BP's earnings announcement, sending the stock about 4% higher in Monday in a positive reaction to the oil giant's anticipated ouster of CEO Tony Hayward in favor of Gulf cleanup czar Bob Dudley.
Authorities suspended operations around BP's ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico and prepared to evacuate workers as a tropical storm threatened to enter the area. BP is also working on a new method to contain oil -- the so-called static kill method.
The U.S. authorized another 24-hour period to collect information and review all of its options before moving ahead with a plan to seal BP's damaged Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico or to reconnect it to surface collection ships.
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is taking a bigger bite out of BP's bottom line, according to a report issued Wednesday by analysts for Sanford C. Bernstein that hikes the oil company's cost to $33 billion.
The past few days have brought several new developments in the BP disaster. Anadarko Petroleum has turned on its former partner, claiming BP is completely responsible for the spill. And questions are emerging about just how much money it will take to clean the Gulf.
The embattled CEO stuck to his script Thursday, expressing contrition and offering empathy. But when lawmakers pressed Hayward for details and explanations, he wouldn't go beyond: "I think it's too early to reach conclusions."
"I understand people want a simple answer about why this happened and who is to blame," BP CEO Tony Hayward said in his prepared remarks. "The truth, however, is that this is a complex accident, caused by an unprecedented combination of failures."
