Member Info for IanKellett

There was an unusual comment about Simon Henry's departure from the board the he ' withheld information from other board members about a potential M&A transaction'. In my experience it would be highly unusual for a NED to be involved in portfolio M&A transactions ie buying / selling subsidiaries or operations - the in house M&A team supervised by corporate strategy or CEO (or now deputy CEO in this case) would have that entirely as their domain. However an industry connected NED (given a non industry connected Chairman), might well be a conduit for initial group merger / takeover conversations to be initiated. I am not putting much store by the comment but it was unusual and stood out to me. I would expect that Meg will want to make her mark before looking to dispose of the group.

I remember it vividly and was appalled at both the racism and misandry within the statements. Some of the most shocking corporate behaviour wrt long term employees I have ever seen.

Should bring back Albert and sack the rest of the board (apart from Meg) - he was the one driving change on behalf of shareholders. What a terrible shame; they removed a man who could really have made this a valuable company. Meg may well find it more like swimming in treacle without his muscular backing.

I didn’t say I had found Nirvana - merely how reluctant I was to leave my lifetime home. We now live in Charleston South Carolina and the climate is conducive to outdoor exercise most of the year round (so not screen time). My work life is now managing personal investments and that is indeed screen time.

At 60 yo I left England 18m ago - place of my birth - very reluctantly - for these reasons you outline and many others. One very wise friend of mine said to me in discussion, 'it is beyond doubt that the UK has been **cked, but the only question is who is staying to fix it'

I didn't hear the whole earnings call - just the Q&A. Did Meg say why they were all 3 in Washington (I presume DC not Tyne and Wear). Given Albert having relocated his previous company to USA and given the screaming need for BP to relocate to USA for numerous reasons, is this just a coincidence or is she telling us she is in Washington as a hint? Gaining US administration backing for relocation to Houston?

I am wondering whether USA has used $ swap line request to push UAE out of OPEC? I am wondering whether 50 years after Yom Kippur USA is now trying to replace OPEC as the leading energy block. USA (worlds no1 producer), Venezuela (largest reserves, apparently, not sure can be delivered), Guyana (USA controlled), UAE, Brazil???. What would Canada do after all the Trump relationship damage? Saudi would be interesting as part of the defence pact with USA??

Bush enabled all of this with the energy independence act (2003? 2004?).

Presumably its all part of the much bigger picture with USA vs China. Presumably also Russia and Iran lead a separate bloc which supplies China.

Who knows, all speculation, but perhaps some larger game is being played out.

I doubt that the $20 premium over Brent futures for physical delivery in next 10-30 (?) days has disappeared literally overnight, even though we are at end of duration on near brent ice futures contract. Everybody will roll their futures not try to arb out. CME says Platts was $114.9 last night.

Fordm,

Not sure if I have this right - please anyone with more knowledge correct me, or correct my maths:

In H1 2025 (for example) ICE traded 214m brent futures contracts. Call it 400m contracts for the year, at 1000 barrels per contract. So if i have decimal in right place that's 400 bn barrels of oil traded in 2025 on ICE brent futures. Call it 1 bn barrels a day at $95 a barrel that's $95bn a day of ICE brent futures traded. For 50 days of war so far- that would be $4.7tn of oil futures traded on ICE (very approximately, and assuming no war volume uptick vs H1 LY which is unlikely). How much would US treasury need to short to hold price down against a potential wall of buyers? Who knows? 10%? So US Treasury would be in for $470bn and rising? Maybe I have the logic here wrong? If not I doubt the US treasury is throwing $0.5tn (or more?) at brent futures market. Plus Scott Bessent has gone on record saying US Treasury is not dealing in the Oil futures markets - maybe he's not telling the truth??

It does feel like it is being suppressed, or perhaps it might be better to say that the oil markets do not appear to be behaving normally / as one would expect. Maybe its just that without OPEC+ volume the market cannot behave normally - ie the market is 'broken'. There certainly 'appears' to have been some front running (would be funny if that was Iran trading futures to make up for oil revenue shortfall).

Anyhow, we might all suspect US Treasury is shorting oil futures, but these numbers above make it perhaps seem less likely?

Apologies to all if I have made mistakes in the numbers above.

Fleccy,

Maybe you have hit the nail on the head. Maybe the market DOES know the outcome of the war irrespective of the actual state of play.... because whatever happens we know DJT will declare victory, a better deal than before, a big beautiful deal .... and we also know that courtesy of Bush and the energy independence act this will not really affect USA much as their oil doesn't come from gulf any more, and to those who say well oil is a globally priced market I would say well it might have been in the past but what we may well be seeing in this disconnect between Platts dated brent and Brent futures and gulf spot prices is that that global market has been broken and energy security will take precedence over price as a demand destruction mechanism. I am not saying any of that is fact because it has yet to play out, but one can see a clear route to the answer for the question you rightly posed.

Xxnjr,

CME gives a price for Platts dated brent - it was $114.90 as at 19:26 yesterday evening. I am no expert in oil futures and spot contracts so if this is not helpful pls excuse.

I agree Spights, need to see 2 key things from Q1 on 28th:

- how large the exceptional oil trading result was and

- what the 2026 guidance section of results look like.

I am also intrigued to see how this Brent near future June contract closes out vis-a-vis Platts dated Brent over price next week or two

Down 200k today (ouch) so I’m hoping 28th makes things better ….

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The last dozen or so posts have been rants about people's personal political views in varying stripes. There are other chat rooms you can join for that - please feel free.

This is a platform which has one simple purpose - to discuss the BP share price. I myself and other members of the group have repeatedly asked, courteously and kindly to please stick to the subject matter or foxtrot oscar to some political gunfight at the ok coral style chat room - but this is not it.

Thank you Spights

Yes indeed but they usually issue a trading statement 2 weeks or so earlier guiding to RC underlying profit changes vs last quarter by division, net interest, tax rates etc - that should come in this next week.

Russia invaded Ukraine on 24th February 2022, USA/Israel attacked Iran on 28th February 2026 (I think?).

All wars are not born equal so who on Earth knows, but its the most recent high oil price volatility period with a significant (much more significant) natural gas supply disruption too. For information only, and I have no idea if this is in any way useful or a potential upside guide, below I show the 2022 vs 2021 quarterly RC underlying profits in $m:

Q1 2022 $6,425m Q1 2021 $2,630m

Q2 2022 $8,533m Q2 2021 $2,630m

Q3 2022 $8,150m Q3 2021 $3,322m

Q4 2022 $4,807m Q4 2021 $4,065m

FY 2022 $27,653m FY 2021 $12,815m

Any ideas anyone for Q1 2026 and what analysts will / might revise forecasts to for FY 2026?

I think it should be next week for Q1 trading statement - 14th January was date for Q4 trading statement.

Any financial markets folks on here with guesses as to what BP might indicate as profit change for Q1 - or better still by division?

Harmonica,

It seems quite likely that BPs Q1 results on 28th April and indeed their Q1 trading statement probably next week (date unspecified) are likely to demonstrate a remarkable increase in BP profits. Goldman has increased its 2026 EPS forecasts I think (not certain but close to, DYOR) from about $0.33 per share as of February to about $0.86 now I think, which is a remarkable 260% increase in EPS forecasts. Clearly the share price has not increased by nearly that amount, and nor should it. When Ukraine war collided with European winter gas requirements in Q4 2022 the gas trading desk at BP achieved remarkable results adding billions of $ to the Operating Profit of the group. This time the analysts will be under some pressure to extrapolate Q1 results into the remainder of the year since on gas it will take Qatar months to get their cooling equipment & trains back up to speed again, and also a large (30%?) piece of their capacity is damaged such that it will take 3-5 years to repair. So gas markets are likely to remain tight, well above Q4 2025 levels. Oil markets equally have become much tighter on supply demand balance, AND it will again take months to get shut in oil fields back up to pressure to return production to previous levels. So I think even if a peace deal is agreed (which seems unlikely, but even if) the likelihood is that a lot of the sell side (investment banks analysts) will be playing catch up on their BP EPS forecasts for 2026, and that SHOULD drive the share price, all other thing being equal, which of course they never are. So I am holding until after Q1 results. Meg may of course announce some fireworks other than trading results, and whether those would be positive or negatives it is hard to know - eg selling all green nonsense assets (following Q4 results write down) might be a positive? Announcing a new committee to look at relocating HQ to Houston (and full USA listing in S&P) would be a positive. A big restructuring charge to increase costs savings could be a negative or a positive depending.

Ooops. TLW down 25% or more tomorrow morning I am guessing. I hope not but it feels like a big drop.

In case anyone is in a flap over WTI appearing to go to a premium over Brent and what that might mean, it's actually that delivery dates on contracts are mismatched. Front WTI contract is May whilst front Brent is now June apparently (bloomberg). WTI for june is about a 5% discount to Brent as normal.