BP slide continues as oil spill costs top £1bn

14th Jun 2010 16:10

Shares in BP fell sharply again as it revealed that the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has now cost it £1.1bn and US government pressure continued to be heaped on the oil giant.Over 51,000 claims have been submitted since the MC252 oil well blew up in the Gulf of Mexico in April, and more than 26,500 payments have been made totalling over £42m.The bill was £865m a week ago and had reached £982m by Thursday, just as a wave of fresh selling sent BP's share price to its lowest in 14 years. Then, the company had received 42,000 claims and made more than 20,000 payments worth over $53m.Obama, visiting Alabama, Mississippi and Florida today, will give his first national address on the disaster tomorrow night after he gets back to Washington.Speaking today, he compared the oil spill with the September 11 terror attacks, saying: 'In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.'The President has been under intense pressure to set out a viable plan to deal with the leak as the crisis enters its 56th day. As well as a clean-up plan, he's likely to call on BP to pump billions of dollars into a compensation fund for the spill's victims, including fishermen who've lost their livelihoods. Florida has already said it wants at least $2.5bn from the oil company.BP's board is holding a summit today at which chiefs will discuss cutting the dividend and establishing a ring-fenced clean-up fund, moves that will go some way to appeasing US politicians ahead of BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg's meeting with Obama on Wednesday.Credit rating agency Moody's said the oil spill has created an unprecedented crisis for oil companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico. BP is the largest company operator of deepwater drilling systems though.BP said today its lower marine riser package (LMRP) containment cap, installed on June 3, collected about 7,720 barrels of oil in the first 12 hours of June 13, in line with the 15,000 barrels a day estimate.So far, the system has collected about 127,000 barrels. Between June 9 and 11 some 115,000 barrels of collected oil were transferred from storage on the Discoverer Enterprise to the barge Massachusetts.