By Chris Baltimore and Ayesha Rascoe
HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - British energy giant BP <:BP.LO:>Plc's stock price plunged in U.S. trading on Wednesday as it faced more U.S. government and congressional scrutiny over its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the worst in U.S. history.
BP depositary shares trading in New York fell 14 percent on growing worries about the costs the energy giant will have to assume because of the spill.
Earlier, the stock closed down 4 percent in London on concern the company might have to suspend its dividend payment under pressure from U.S. politicians who say the company should put its cash into paying for legal claims and environmental damage in the Gulf.
Jon Najarian, a founder of Web information site optionMonster.com in Chicago, said of the U.S. stock plunge, "It seems that shares are under pressure from the fear of whether BP can survive. It is not just a rumour about the potential of a dividend cut in BP anymore. Now it's about the survivability of the company."
"Frequently panics like this are buying opportunities but given that what is going on is one mile under the ocean no one is comfortable with the facts as presented so far.
Phil Weiss, oil analyst with Argus Research in New York, said momentum was working against BP as news gets progressively worse despite increased capture of oil from the well, but he still believes the company will be able to survive the crisis.
"I still feel like they can, but there's more doubt in my mind than there was a week ago," he said. "Momentum is a powerful thing."
Amid a string of congressional hearings on the disaster, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a Senate hearing he would ask BP to repay the salaries of any workers laid off due to the six-month moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling imposed by the U.S. government after the spill.
Salazar said he would consider lifting the moratorium early if he received recommendations from a presidential commission investigating the spill sooner than expected.
The spill began on April 20 after an offshore oil rig explosion that killed 11 workers and ruptured the deep-sea well. It has caused environmental devastation along the U.S. Gulf Coast and threatens lucrative fishing and tourist industries. The spill also has presented a stern test of President Barack Obama's leadership.
Energy giant BP has seen its stock ravaged since April. Analysts are getting anxious about BP's dividend. In the past two days alone, seven have cut their expectations on the likely payout. http://link.reuters.com/jeb29k.
The cost to insure the debt of BP, Anadarko and Transocean jumped to new highs on Wednesday on concerns over costs the companies face as a result of exposure to the
spill.
Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, who is leading the government relief effort, told reporters that BP planned to move another rig to the spill site on June 14. This would enable the company to boost its capacity to collect oil from the well to 28,000 barrels (1.18 million gallons/4.45 million litres) a day, he said.
Allen did not indicate this meant the flow rate of the oil could be as high as 28,000 barrels a day, but his comments are likely to underscore that neither BP nor the government have yet managed to determine just how much oil is gushing out.
Government scientists have estimated that the leak spews 12,000-19,000 barrels a day, with one estimate as high as 25,000 barrels. They are due to present revised estimates later this week or early next week.
'HARD NUMBERS'
"I'm not going to declare victory or anything until I have hard numbers," Allen said.
In Washington, lawmakers and the Obama administration, which faces growing voter discontent over its handling of the crisis, kept up the pressure on BP and other oil companies.
BP America President Lamar McKay, along with top executives from Exxon Mobil Corp, Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips and Shell Oil Co, were called to testify at a June 15 congressional hearing that will look at the oil spill and America's energy future.
BP's latest containment effort, which follows a series of earlier failed attempts, involved placing a containment cap with a seal on a deep-sea pipe from which the oil is gushing.
The captured oil is being channelled to a vessel on the surface above, where it is stored for later processing at a refinery ashore. Allen said the vessel was nearly full and was offloading its oil to a tanker.
The containment cap system is BP's most successful effort so far to deal with the leak, but large amounts of oil continue to spew into the ocean. Government scientists had warned that the latest effort could increase the amount of oil flowing from the well by up to 20 percent.
Salazar offered a lower figure at Wednesday's Senate hearing. "The rate of increase may have been somewhere between 4 and 5 percent over what it was before," he said.
The spill has already fouled wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama. It also has sent tar balls ashore on beaches in Florida. One-third of the Gulf's federal waters remains closed to fishing and the toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals is climbing.
DAMAGES CLAIMS
In a further sign of the Obama administration's pressure on BP, Allen demanded that London-based BP provide more information and transparency on how it was meeting damages claims by individuals and businesses affected by the spill.
"The federal government and the public expects BP's claims process to fully address the needs of impacted individuals and businesses," Allen said in a June 8 letter to BP.
BP has paid out close to $50 million in damages claims so far along the Gulf Coast -- mostly to fishermen, shrimpers, oystermen and boat operators who say their livelihoods have been impacted by the spill. BP's total bill from the spill so far, including cleanup costs, has reached $1.25 billion.
BP said it had collected about 15,000 barrels of oil from its blown-out well on Tuesday. That brings the cumulative total for five days to more than 57,000 barrels.
But the ultimate solution to the leak lies in the drilling of a relief well and that won't be completed before August.
(Additional reporting by Deborah Zabarenko, Ayesha Rascoe and Ross Colvin in Washington, Joanne Frearson, Harpreet Bhal and Natalie Harrison in London, Pascal Fletcher in Miami, Ernest Scheyder in New York and Kristin Hays in Houston; writing by Pascal Fletcher and Ross Colvin; editing by Will Dunham and Frances Kerry)
