LONDON—BP PLC's $18.7 billion deal to settle all federal and
state claims from the deadly Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of
Mexico lets the company leave behind a dark episode.
Now, BP's challenge is to convince investors that, after years
of belt-tightening and scaling back its ambitions, the company can
re-establish itself as a pioneering and profitable force among the
world's top energy companies.
Thursday's settlement, which still needs to be approved by a
federal judge, provides clarity over the financial penalties BP
will face for the catastrophic blowout and removes a constraint on
its spending.
"The company can now focus on future growth and moving on," BP
Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary said in an interview.
That won't be easy. BP is a very different company today than it
was before the April 2010 disaster, and it is a difficult time for
a repositioning. And, with one of its major liabilities addressed,
it could be an acquisition target, analysts said.
The oil spill defined BP's trajectory over the past five years,
transforming the oil giant into a much smaller, leaner entity. BP
has sold off more than $40 billion-worth of assets in the wake of
the spill to help pay for legal and cleanup costs. The company's
oil and gas production volumes have plummeted nearly 20% to 3.1
million barrels a day last year from 3.8 million barrels a day in
2010.
It was a humbling period for one of the world's oldest and most
storied oil companies, whose mergers with Amoco and ARCO in 1998
and 2000 made it a formidable force and helped coin a term for a
new kind of oil company: the "super major."
Under Bob Dudley, the company's first American CEO and an Amoco
veteran, the company entered a period of retrenchment in the wake
of the spill. It devised a 10-point, three year plan intended to
restore trust and value to the company through a renewed focus on
safety, value creation and an aggressive divestment plan. That
completed in 2014. Then the oil market collapsed.
The slide in oil prices over the past 12 months have hit BP and
others' balance sheets and instigated a wave of cost-cutting
measures. BP saw its profits slump 40% in the first quarter
compared with a year earlier as oil prices fell to their lowest
level in six years.
This year BP has slashed capital spending and lowered the value
of reserves in places like the North Sea and Angola, two regions
that are key to the company's projected cash generation over the
next five years. Meanwhile, it remains exposed to significant
political risk through its stake in state-owned Russian oil company
OAO Rosneft.
The settlement removes a key risk and represents a starting gun
on life after Deepwater Horizon. The company's shares jumped on the
news, rising about 5% on Thursday in the wake of the
announcement.
"It's good to clear the thing up and know what the liability
is," said Paul Mumford, an investment manager at BP investor
Cavendish Asset Management Ltd.
For the company the settlement with the federal government and
five U.S. states is seen as a pragmatic move that averted long and
drawn-out litigation and draws a line under its legal tussle with
the U.S. government.
It will cost BP an extra $10 billion on top of the $44 billion
it has already incurred in legal and clean up charges, but the
payments will be spread out over 18 years at about $1.1 billion
annually. Payments for fines under the Clean Water Act and to clean
up natural resource damages won't begin until 12 months after the
agreement is completed, giving BP some additional breathing
space.
The company already has some funds set aside that can be used
for the initial annual payments, though not enough.
The payouts, Mr. Gilvary said, "will simply become one more use
of cash that we need to make sure we plan for into the future."
It will cost less than the worst case scenario. A judge could
have imposed a $13 billion fine for federal Clean Water Act
violations, and the states were seeking up to $35 billion in
damages.
"I am neither pleased nor disappointed," Mr. Gilvary said. "I
see it as a realistic solution to a difficult problem and we've
reached what we believe to be a satisfactory agreement."
The settlement could also reignite speculation around a possible
merger.
BP has long been the target of takeover rumors and low oil
prices have historically spurred giant oil companies to snap up
rivals. Royal Dutch Shell PLC's $70 billion deal for BG PLC earlier
this year as the latest example. A statement by the British
government that it would oppose any foreign move on BP in the wake
of Shell's bid for BG only served to stoke speculation there could
be interested parties.
Now that BP has settled a large portion of the litigation
relating to its Gulf of Mexico spill, that removes "one level of
uncertainty for a predator" that might consider a bid for BP, said
Cavendish Asset Management's Mr. Mumford.
Write to Sarah Kent at sarah.kent@wsj.com and Justin Scheck at
justin.scheck@wsj.com
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