LONDON (Reuters) – Shares in oil company BP (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) fell 1 percent on Thursday, underperforming rivals, with two dealers blaming talk that the company had begun telling analysts its quarterly profits would be below their current forecasts.

BP denied giving analysts any such guidance.

“Sounds like net (profit) will be $5 billion (3.2 billion pounds) at best,” said one dealer, who added that his investment house currently had a $5.3 billion forecast for BP’s third-quarter net replacement cost (RC) profits.

JP Morgan Cazenove, one of the first banks to publish earnings estimates since the end of the third quarter, issued a forecast of $4.8 billion, 10 percent below the average forecast from a Reuters poll of three analysts.

JP M Morgan said its earnings per share forecast was 12 percent below the consensus forecast from other analysts.

Analysts frequently contact companies’ investor relations’ divisions after the end of a quarter to discuss the company’s performance in the quarter, but companies are not allowed to give them any market-sensitive information that has not been made public.

BP has been the subject of rumours on several occasions in recent years that it was giving analysts guidance on upcoming earnings announcements, but a spokesman said the oil giant stuck firmly to the rules.

Oct 5 (Reuters) – U.S. explorer Anadarko Petroleum Corp upped its estimate of the amount of natural gas it has discovered offshore Mozambique on Wednesday, lifting hopes for the emergence of East Africa as a major gas exporter.

Anadarko said it believed its fields in the deepwater Rovuma Basin contained recoverable reserves of at least 10 trillion cubic feet, up from an earlier estimate of at least 6 Tcf.

The increase has prompted Anadarko and its junior partners – a unit of Japan’s Mitsui & Co Ltd and Dublin-based Cove Energy Plc — to double the size of the planned facilities they aim to build to extract and freeze the gas and export it in tankers as liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“Our successful drilling program offshore Mozambique continues to expand the already world-class resource potential of this frontier basin,” said Bob Daniels, Anadarko senior vice president, worldwide exploration.

Cove Energy Chief Executive John Craven said he was confident of additional discoveries in the area and analysts at Citigroup predicted reserves of 12 Tcf.

London-listed shares in Cove, which has an 8.5 percent interest in the exploration block known as Offshore Area 1, located close to the border with Tanzania, jumped 8.6 percent to 72.25p.

Anadarko now plans to bring a second drill ship to the area to accelerate drilling. The partners are still targeting a final decision on whether to proceed with the LNG plan in the third quarter of 2013.

LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – British oil producer Premier Oil is to buy North Sea-focused Encore Oil for 221 million pounds ($340 million), continuing its strategy of expanding by incremental acquisitions rather than concentrating on high-risk, high-impact exploration.

While the headline price being paid represents a heady $20 per barrel for Encore’s reserves, Chief Financial Officer Tony Durrant pointed out that the deal included tax losses and exploration potential.

Citigroup said the tax losses brought the purchase price down to $17/bbl, still at the upper end of recent transactions.

The bank also noted that raising Premier’s stake in the Catcher field to 50 percent could allow the company to accelerate development of the field, potentially raising earnings.

Premier shares traded down 0.5 percent at 337 pence, against a 2.4 percent rise in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index .

Premier said on Wednesday it was offering 70 pence per Encore Oil share, a 55 percent premium to Tuesday’s close, and that Encore investors could take the bid in cash or Premier shares. Encore was advised on the deal by Rothschild.

London-based Premier also said it was on track to deliver on its stated strategy and to realize its medium-term target of pumping 100,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.

LONDON (Reuters) – BP and its billionaire partners in TNK-BP face off in arbitration on Wednesday, as the UK oil giant refutes claims it broke a shareholder agreement and should pay $4.9 billion (3.1 billion pounds) in damages.

BP prompted the spat with AAR, the consortium of Russian and Russia-connected oligarchs who own half of TNK-BP, by agreeing a share swap and Arctic exploration deal with state-controlled Rosneft.

AAR secured a court injunction that scuppered the tie-up.

Now AAR is asking a Stockholm-based tribunal to rule on whether the planned Rosneft deal represented a breach of the TNK-BP shareholder pact, under which BP agreed to use TNK-BP as its main investment vehicle in Russia.

AAR believes the failure to execute the Rosneft tie-up through TNK-BP cost it billions.

Minority shareholders in TNK-BP, with whom AAR denies any relationship, have filed a lawsuit in a Russian court seeking 154.3 billion roubles ($4.9 billion) in damages.

Sources close to the matter said the hearings on Wednesday were aimed at deciding whether BP had broken the agreement, and that any damage awards would be decided later.

LONDON, Sept 28 (Reuters) – BP and its billionaire partners in TNK-BP face off in arbitration on Wednesday, as the UK oil giant refutes claims it broke a shareholder agreement and should pay $4.9 billion in damages.

BP prompted the spat with AAR, the consortium of Russian and Russia-connected oligarchs who own half of TNK-BP, by agreeing a share swap and Arctic exploration deal with state-controlled Rosneft.

AAR secured a court injunction that scuppered the tie-up.

Now AAR is asking a Stockholm-based tribunal to rule on whether the planned Rosneft deal represented a breach of the TNK-BP shareholder pact, under which BP agreed to use TNK-BP as its main investment vehicle in Russia.

AAR believes the failure to execute the Rosneft tie-up through TNK-BP cost it billions.

Minority shareholders in TNK-BP, with whom AAR denies any relationship, have filed a lawsuit in a Russian court seeking 154.3 billion roubles ($4.9 billion) in damages.

Sources close to the matter said the hearings on Wednesday were aimed at deciding whether BP had broken the agreement, and that any damage awards would be decided later.

LONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters) – BP said it was mulling a pipeline to transport gas from Azerbaijan to Central Europe amid doubts about the credibility of the pipeline plans currently on the table.

A BP spokesman said on Tuesday the London-based oil major and its partners in the Shah Deniz II field — Norway’s Statoil and Azeri state oil company Socar — could build a pipeline from Turkey to the Romanian-Hungarian border.

The pipeline would transport 10 billion cubic metres (BCM) of gas per year which Azerbaijan’s government said should be sold to European markets.

The proposal to build the South-East Europe Pipeline (SEEP), which BP first unveiled at a conference in Baku last week, is despite the fact that BP invited three consortia to submit bids on Oct. 1 to build a pipeline for the gas.

However, the Shah Deniz partners have grown frustrated that none of the three groups has yet been able to present plans that absolutely guarantee they can fulfil any gas purchase obligations they take on, a source close to the matter said.

“The preference would be to have one of the three that are bidding come up with something,” the source added.

The three groups competing to build the infrastructure to carry Shah Deniz II gas to Europe are Nabucco, Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and Interconnector Greece-Italy (IGI) Poseidon.

LONDON (Reuters) – Experts have cast doubt on claims of a giant shale gas find in northwest England, leaving opponents to accuse the company behind it of painting an excessively rosy picture to win political support for the controversial project.

Cuadrilla Resources is owned by Australian drilling company AJ Lucas and private equity firm Riverstone, and has former BP Chief Executive John Browne on its board, said on Wednesday it had found 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in place at its licenses in Lancashire.

The announcement made front page news in the UK, with one national newspaper predicting that Blackpool, the fading seaside resort nearby, would become another Dallas, and a local journal celebrating a ‘gas gold rush’ and ‘jobs bonanza’.

Even discounting the find to allow for the fact that typically only around 20 percent of gas locked in shales — rocks with low permeability which require considerable coaxing to give up their treasure — is recoverable, the find would classify as one of the biggest gas discoveries in the world in the past decade.

The news was welcomed by some politicians who see the project as a boost to UK energy security, with North Sea reserves declining sharply. But it was met with dread by environmentalists who say the drilling process behind shale gas –known as fracking — can pollute ground water.

Yet the excitement may be premature.

The resource estimate has not been independently verified and the company has so far only drilled two wells in the basin.

LONDON, Sept 23 (Reuters) – Experts have cast doubt on claims of a giant shale gas find in northwest England, leaving opponents to accuse the company behind it of painting an excessively rosy picture to win political support for the controversial project.

Cuadrilla Resources is owned by Australian drilling company AJ Lucas and private equity firm Riverstone, and has former BP Chief Executive John Browne on its board, said on Wednesday it had found 200 trillion cubic feet of gas in place at its licences in Lancashire.

The announcement made front page news in the UK, with one national newspaper predicting that Blackpool, the fading seaside resort nearby, would become another Dallas, and a local journal celebrating a ‘gas gold rush’ and ‘jobs bonanza’.

Even discounting the find to allow for the fact that typically only around 20 percent of gas locked in shales – rocks with low permeability which require considerable coaxing to give up their treasure — is recoverable, the find would classify as one of the biggest gas discoveries in the world in the past decade.

The news was welcomed by some politicians who see the project as a boost to UK energy security, with North Sea reserves declining sharply. But it was met with dread by environmentalists who say the drilling process behind shale gas –known as fraccing — can pollute ground water.

Yet the excitement may be premature.

The resource estimate has not been independently verified and the company has so far only drilled two wells in the basin.

LONDON (Reuters) – Findings of the second major investigation by the U.S. government into the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, may press BP into putting over $30 billion on the table to quickly settle its outstanding legal headaches.

The joint Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement probe into the Macondo well blow-out which led to the death of 11 men and the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, put most of the blame on BP

The report, released on Wednesday, was even more damning of BP’s behaviour than the Presidential panel’s findings, which were issued in January and February. Both reports also highlighted mistakes made by BP’s contractors, driller Transocean and cement specialist Halliburton .

The investigations have not left London-based BP eager to face the Department of Justice or civil claimants in court.

“We would like everything settled as soon as we can, otherwise you have lingering reputation issues and investor uncertainty,” one insider said after the latest report.

BP declined to comment on its legal strategy.

Companies often drag out litigation, as payments in the future have less value than payments now.

LONDON (Reuters) – Findings of the second major investigation by the U.S. government into the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, may press BP into putting over $30 billion (19 billion pounds) on the table to quickly settle its outstanding legal headaches.

The joint Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement probe into the Macondo well blow-out which led to the death of 11 men and the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, put most of the blame on BP.

The report, released on Wednesday, was even more damning of BP’s behaviour than the Presidential panel’s findings, which were issued in January and February. Both reports also highlighted mistakes made by BP’s contractors, driller Transocean and cement specialist Halliburton.

The investigations have not left London-based BP eager to face the Department of Justice or civil claimants in court.

“We would like everything settled as soon as we can, otherwise you have lingering reputation issues and investor uncertainty,” one insider said after the latest report.

BP declined to comment on its legal strategy.

Companies often drag out litigation, as payments in the future have less value than payments now.