BP's reputation has been so severely damaged by the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that the London-based oil giant may go out of business, Russian daily Izvestia said on Monday.
An explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) off the Louisiana coast, on April 20, causing a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil continues to gush from the broken well into the sea despite weeks of work to stop the leak.
Credit Suisse bank experts have already estimated company's loss at $37 billion - three times more than BP's annual cash flow. BP's shares have dropped by 34% since the incident and major rivals have the opportunity to buy it for an extremely low price, Britain's Financial Times said.
The accident has overshadowed all BP's recent achievements and now it is valued at only $115 billion. Western experts call Shell the most likely buyer, while Russian ones expect ExxonMobil to make a move. Neither company has officially commented.
"The impact on the brand is really serious," Konstantin Simonov, chief of the Moscow-based National Energy Security Fund think tank, told Izvestia.
The paper added that BP's top management say in private conversations that "the brand is totally destroyed."
Despite the blow to its reputation, Russian experts don't believe BP will die on feet that easily. Simonov said BP could borrow money to get it through the crisis.
If the company fails to secure credit, bankruptcy could become a very real possibility, he added.
BP has already failed with six attempts to halt the leakage from the underwater, and it looks like to continue until August, although the company says it is now managing to gather about 10,000 barrels of oil a day using a special plugging device attached to the head of the drill to siphon oil up to surface ships.
MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti)
