BP faces huge tab, has deep pockets

Even if all of BP’s future profits went to pay for the Gulf spill, the company still owns vast resources of oil reserves that could be converted into cash by selling them to another oil company.

According to estimates from bond rating agency Moody’s, BP has total proven reserves of roughly 18 billion barrels of oil in the ground, worth some $1.35 trillion at the current price of $75 a barrel. It also has a string of new fields due to move into production over the next few years, including other wells in the Gulf, along with finds in Azerbaijan, Angola, Egypt and Indonesia.

Thad Allen told reporters BP should be able to recover 28,000 barrels of spilled oil per day by the end of this week. At $75 a barrel, that works out to more than $2 million a day