Free Republic

Excerpt - MOSCOW (AFP)--British-Russian oil company TNK-BP chief executive, Robert Dudley, has been summoned to appear before Russian prosecutors on Monday to explain "violations" of labor laws by his company, Interfax news agency reported Saturday. Dudley "temporarily" left Russia this week, the company said Thursday, saying he would run the company from outside the country. ~ snip ~

Oil was again gushing uncontrollably from the BP spill site on Wednesday after the company was forced to remove the containment cap when a robotic submarine hit a vent. The news came as officials also reported two deaths in the response effort. BP hoped to reinstall the cap later Wednesday after fixing the vent and checking for safety. Earlier Wednesday, BP said that Bob Dudley was appointed to head the new Gulf Coast Restoration Organization, which is in charge of cleaning up the oil spill.

Since last summer, Bob Dudley, the CEO of the British oil giant BP, has been cautioning that he expects oil prices to stay “lower for longer.” Now he believes he’s determined how much longer those prices may decline, and when they may start rising again. “A low point could be in the first quarter [of 2016],” Dudley said in an interview broadcast Saturday by the BBC. “But 2016’s third and fourth quarters could witness a more natural balance between supply and demand, after which stock levels could start to wear off.”

The U.K. government wants BP to still stand for “British Petroleum.” The Financial Times reported that Downing Street would do all it could to block a takeover of BP. Weakened and shrunken down due to the massive, and still rising, toll stemming from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP could become a takeover target from one of the larger oil majors out there. Rumors have been swirling in recent weeks that perhaps ExxonMobil or Chevron could be eyeing the British oil giant, so much so that BP’s CEO Bob Dudley had to publicly dispel any notion that his company is for...