BP Share News (BP.)

High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery among developed nations this year, the leading energy watchdog has warned, putting pressure on the Opec oil cartel to increase production.Over the past year the oil import costs for the 34 mostly rich countries that make up the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have soared by $200bn to $790bn at the end of 2010, according to an analysis by the International Energy Agency, the FT reports.The cost of a loaf of bread is set to rise this month, fuelling domestic inflationary pressures, after UK wheat prices hit an all-time high. Industry executives and traders have quietly told wholesale consumers, such as bakers and pasta and biscuit producers, to expect price increases over the next two to three weeks, following a round of hikes in October and November. The warning came as the cost of UK wheat hit a nominal record high in the London market on Tuesday at £203.30 per tonne, up 90 per cent over the past year and above the previous peak of £197.50 a tonne set in September 2007, the FT reports.Shares in BP jumped as much as 7% to a six-month high in London on the first day of trading in the new year as investors bought back into the stock after news that its compensation pay-outs for the Gulf of Mexico spill might be much lower than anticipated. Fresh reports that rival Royal Dutch Shell considered a takeover bid for the UK oil group also helped drive up the shares. The shares were buoyed by positive comments from Kenneth Feinberg, the lawyer in charge of the $20bn compensation fund set up by BP in the summer to help pay for claims from the spill. "I would hope that half that money would be more than enough to pay all the claims," Mr Feinberg told Bloomberg Television, adding that many claims lacked sufficient documentation to warrant payment, the FT reports.Manufacturing activity roared to a 16-year high last month, but surging costs of energy and metals are fuelling inflationary pressures, according to a closely watched industry report. The purchasing managers' index of factory activity rocketed to a "truly spectacular" 58.3, well above the 50 level that marks the divide between contraction and expansion, according to Markit Group. Separate figures from the United States showed that manufacturers there also enjoyed a jump in orders at the end of the year, the Times reports.The US economy's improvement in recent weeks has not weakened the conviction among senior officials at the Federal Reserve that a second dose of quantitative easing (QE) is needed, minutes of their latest meeting show. The decision by the Fed's Open Market Committee (FOMC) to embark on a new, $600bn (£384bn) round of QE proved controversial even without the last two months' evidence that the world's largest economy is strengthening, the Telegraph reports.Blackrock, the world's biggest asset management firm, has predicted that US stock markets will record their third straight year of gains since the financial crisis, brushing off anxieties about Europe's debt woes and the scale of stimulus in the US. lackRock, which invests $3.45trn (£2.2trn) for customers, expects the S&P 500 to finish this year at 1,350 or beyond. It closed yesterday at 1,266, the Telegraph reports.The man running Tesco's new cash-for-gold service was a boss of a fraudulent college that swindled nearly 80,000 students. Peter Kenyon, chief executive of Ramsdens Financial Services, was a director of National Distance Learning College. His business partner, Michael Smallman, is serving a seven-year sentence for fraudulent trading and money laundering after he was convicted in 2008 of tricking students into believing they would receive a recognised qualification. Mr Kenyon was cleared of any wrongdoing and there is no suggestion that he acted improperly, the Times reports.Mozilla'a Firefox has replaced Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the most widely-used web browser in Europe. The search engine took a 38.1% market share across the continent in December, surpassing Internet Explorer's 37.5% - the first time Microsoft has lost the top spot in a leading market. Google Chrome saw its share rise to 14.6% from just 5.1% a year earlier, the Telegraph reports.EasyJet is buying 15 new passenger planes and upgrading an existing 20-strong order to larger aircraft, in the teeth of long-standing opposition to expansion plans from the founder and largest shareholder, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. The decision from easyJet chief executive, Carolyn McCall - who took over in July when her predecessor left under the cloud of an increasingly vicious spat with Sir Stelios - commits the company to ambitious European expansion plans, the Independent reports.