BP plc Close To $9 Billion Finance Package, Test Of “The Whale” Goes Nowhere

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jul 5, 9:50PM EDT · Published Jul 5, 2:39PM EDT

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BP plc (NYSE: BP) got two piece of news today, one much better than the other. The Wall Street Journal reports that the oil company has probably brought in $9 billion in financing, about $1 billion from each of nine banks which include Barclays PLC, BNP Paribas SA, Citigroup Inc., Banco Santander SA, HSBC Holdings PLC, Royal Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and Société Générale SA, the paper said.

The loans have a one-year maturity and one year option for extension.The other information is that a two-day test of “The Whale”, a 350 yard long tanker turned into a skimmer, meant to see if it can collect massive amounts of oil have not been successful so far, according to Reuters. TMT Shipping Offshore, which owns the boat, said the seas were too rough to allow the skimming device on the ship to do its work.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.