Gulf Oil Spill: Coast Guard Tells BP To Speed Up Containment Process

Someone on Huffingtonpost just said oil companies will make money off this (the longer it goes on) because oil prices will rise. This makes me recall from my north sea oil well accounting experience that as an industry practice no large oil exploration wells are drilled by a single company, oil companies typically go into investment groups to spread risk. So, although BP is most likely just the lead company on this well/field exploration (in an investment group of many oil companies), BP is simultaneously involved in partnership with these same players in many other large exploration/production projects around the globe, and indeed might have more to gain by rising oil prices (doubling would do the trick for sure) than it has to lose in this disaster, where losses and liabilities will be spread amongst the investors in the well. "Gosh, no dividend on that one". This is my theoretical explanation of the universal dithering, my industry knowledge is sparce, please pick it apart.



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BP is the operator and principal developer of the oil field with 65% of interest, while 25% is owned by Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, and 10% by MOEX Offshore 2007, a unit of Mitsui.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost