London, January 14, 2026, 11:45 GMT — Regular session
- BP shares fall after the company flagged $4 billion-$5 billion in impairments tied to its transition businesses
- Oil prices extend gains on Iran supply-risk fears, even as U.S. inventory data point to looser balances
- Traders eye U.S. government stockpile figures later Wednesday and BP’s Feb. 10 results
BP shares fell on Wednesday after the oil major warned of up to $5 billion in impairments linked to its low-carbon businesses and flagged weak oil trading into year-end. The stock was down 1.6% by mid-morning in London.
The update lands at an awkward moment for European energy stocks. Investors have been leaning harder on cash flow and debt reduction after a year of softer crude prices, while boards keep tinkering with the balance between oil spending and transition bets.
It also lands with oil prices lurching again on geopolitics. That mix — volatile crude, shifting policy risk and uneven demand — makes near-term guidance and trading performance matter more than it might in a calmer tape.
In a fourth-quarter trading statement, BP forecast post-tax impairment charges of $4 billion to $5 billion, mainly tied to transition businesses, and said it would exclude them from its “underlying replacement cost profit” — its adjusted net income measure. BP also said oil trading was expected to be weak, with net debt seen at $22 billion to $23 billion at year-end, helped by $3.5 billion of divestment proceeds in the quarter; it kept the date for its full results at Feb. 10. Investegate
Oil prices rose for a fifth straight session, with Brent up 1.3% at $66.31 a barrel and U.S. West Texas Intermediate up 1.3% at $61.96 by 1054 GMT, as traders weighed unrest in Iran and threats exchanged with Washington. “We are in a period of geopolitical instability and potential supply disruption,” said Jorge Montepeque, managing director at Onyx Capital Group. Reuters
Demand signals remain messy. China’s crude imports hit record levels in December and for 2025, helped by stockpiling and lower prices, with Rystad Energy’s Ye Lin pointing to energy security as a key driver of the buying.
On the supply side, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said lower prices are expected to curb U.S. drilling and knock output down this year, while warning that more Venezuelan supply could add pressure if sanctions ease. The agency forecast Brent averaging $56 a barrel this year, down from $69 last year.
Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, kept its 2026 average price view at $56 for Brent and $52 for WTI and said it expects a 2.3 million-barrel-per-day surplus in 2026, with risks tilted modestly to the downside if non-OPEC supply keeps swelling.
But there are clear ways this can go wrong for either side of the trade. If Iran’s unrest fails to disrupt barrels and Venezuelan flows build, crude could give back its risk premium quickly; if that happens, trading and realizations tend to bite harder than one-off write-down headlines.
