Profits down and Jobs to go at BP

You will have noticed the drop in the cost of both petrol and diesel if you are a car driver, for the price charged at the pumps has been falling quite noticeably over the last few weeks.

In fact that cost of Brent Crude is now trading at around $47 per barrel which is much lower than the $115 which was being charged in the summer months. Whilst the reduction in oil price has been celebrated by car owners and transport businesses alike, it has not been good news for companies such as BP.

In fact BP have seen they share price taking a huge battering in the last couple of months and that has been compounded with a huge drop in profits. With BP having already put into place many cost cutting measures in an attempt to reduce their losses those measures do not seem to be making much difference.

Yesterday BP made an announcement for their shareholders in which they said that they are going to be taking several other measures and putting them into place should the price of oil remain lower in value that $60 per barrel.

Those additional measures are likely to include further job losses and even more savings will have to be made throughout the company as a whole.

Whilst the company is of course still making some very large profits, it has been the drop of 40% recently reported which has alarmed most investors. This time last year BP was sitting on a third quarter profit of some £1.98billion however that profit this year at the third quarter mark stands at just £1.18billion.

BP has additionally been hit with some huge bills for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill which occurred back in 2010 and that tragedy has resulted in BP having to pay $18.7billion in compensation. That payment is to be paid over 18 years and as such is going to be a burden around the company’s neck for many years to follow.

The BBC Horizon programme produced a documentry on the disaster in November 2010

Whether the price of oil will rise in the next few weeks or months does remain to be seen, for many suppliers are awash with oil more so due to a reduction in demand from countries such as China and India.

You are therefore advised to spend as much time required to research as is necessary in regards to which side of any Binary Options trade you are considering placing, not only on BP but any company in the oil and petroleum market sectors.