Following BP’s agreement to settle claims from businesses and individuals harmed by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, shares of the integrated oil major rallied more than 1% Monday morning before losing some of the gain.
Futures for the U.S. crude oil benchmark rose marginally to $106.76 per barrel.
Shares of BP (BP) are trading around $47.85, up 35 cents, or 0.72%. It’s a positive that the settlement came in at $7.8 billion, well below the $14 billion initial cost estimate.BP has already taken a pre-tax charge of $37 billion, and had a remaining liability on its balance sheet of $10.6 billion at the end of 2011, according to the analysts at energy research firm Simmons & Co.
But BP is in the midst of a large asset sales program and the legal challenges are not over. Of the settlement reached late Friday, Simmons notes it:
“excludes claims against BP made by the U.S. Department of Justice, including civil penalties under the Clean Water Act, Natural Resource Damages under the Oil Pollution Act, and any potential criminal fines and penalties  around which the degree of uncertainty (and potential for upside relative to what BP has provisioned) has always been greatest.”
Shares of oilfield services companies didn’t absorb any positives on the BP news. Halliburton (HAL) and Schlumberger (SLB) shares were each down 1%, while Transocean (RIG) shares were off about 0.55%.
