BP has tried to allay fears that it is running out of money as its shares fell again amid renewed fears that it might be unable to meet the rapidly increasing costs of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
As BP shares slipped another 2.2 per cent to 349.5p last night — just under half their price before the explosion on April 20 — people close to the company insisted that it had enough resources to deal with the crisis.
They played down reports that the company was planning to build a $50 billion (£34 billion) war chest through an imminent bond placing and an accelerated sale of $20 billion worth of assets.
BP faces another challenge to its international reputation as further doubts surfaced over a $7 billion plan to buy ten deepwater oil fields in Brazil.
Haroldo Lima, Brazil’s leading oil industry regulator, said that his Government would not make a decision on the acquisition of the fields, owned by Devon Energy of America, until the Deepwater Horizon crisis, now in its 64th day, had ended.
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The acquisition — the largest by BP since Tony Hayward was appointed chief executive in 2007 — was announced six weeks before the blast in the Gulf of Mexico.
“We are analysing the deal but we won’t decide now, in the middle of this very tense moment and before the studies about the Gulf of Mexico spill tell whether things will get worse,” Mr Lima told the Brazilian newspaper Valor Econômico.
Adding to a mounting sense of crisis within the company, Mr Hayward withdrew from a speech he was due to make today at a London oil conference after heavy criticism of his decision to take part in a yacht race around the Isle of Wight at the weekend.
BP said that the last-minute decision had been taken because of his “very heavy schedule of commitments to Gulf of Mexico activities”.
Mr Hayward is expected to fly to Russia this week to reassure President Medvedev that BP, which owns stakes in two of Russia’s largest oil companies, remains strong and viable.
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BP, which said it had spent $2 billion on the clean-up effort, said last week that it planned to trim its annual spending plans and sell an extra $8 billion in assets this year to help fund the effort.
The company, which last week agreed to establish a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the spill, has also drawn up options to finance what Goldman Sachs estimates could reach up to $70 billion in costs and compensation claims.
These are understood to include bond issues and further asset sales but sources close to the company said there were no immediate plans to activate these. A spokeswoman declined to comment on BP’s finances.
BP said that its oil-capture systems had collected or burned off 23,290 barrels of crude on Sunday. The containment cap system installed on June 3 collected 14,570 barrels, while a second system started up on June 16 burned off 8,720 barrels, BP said.
BP is also locked in a legal fight with Anadarko, its 25 per cent partner, on the Macondo drilling licence.
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John Christiansen, a spokesman for Anadarko, said that none of its employees were on the rig at the time of the accident and claimed that BP’s “reckless decisions” appeared to have led to the disaster. He said his company did not believe it was liable to contribute to the fund.