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Charting the BP Gulf oil spill lawsuit

The US Department of Justice today announced its lawsuit against BP and eight other companies involved in the disastrous Gulf of Mexico spill.

We added some charts of BP and other firms involved to the Chart.ly and StockTwits streams today.

Here's how the big 4 oil names reacted to the official news of the suit in today's trading session. Note that Haliburton (HAL) was not named in the government's suit, but still moved notably to the downside.


There's a lot of talk about BP's being kept alive in order to bleed it nearly dry to fund government spending programs. I'll let the BP and legal/political experts weigh in on that, as I'm not as familiar with the company's assets vs. liabilities picture.

However, we do know that BP has been moving to sell off assets and reposition itself as a leaner company in order to survive. Will they succeed? That is the (current enterprise value) $164 billion dollar question.
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