LONDON, March 27, 2026, 12:11 GMT.
BP shares ended Thursday at 583.1 pence, up 2.82% on the day and just below the 52-week high they touched on March 19, as investors kept rewarding oil producers for a renewed jump in crude. Brent, the benchmark used to price much of the world’s oil, rose 2.78% to $111.01 a barrel by 1118 GMT on Friday. 1
The move matters because BP is still trying to win back investors after a bruising reset. In February it halted $750 million of quarterly buybacks — company purchases of its own stock — to focus on debt reduction after trimming net debt to $22 billion, and incoming chief executive Meg O’Neill is due to join on April 1. 2
BP’s rise also stood out against the wider London market. The FTSE 100 fell 1.3% on Thursday as renewed Middle East uncertainty weighed on sentiment, while BP moved the other way. 3
For now, the stock is trading more like a crude proxy than a verdict on strategy. Brent has jumped 53% since Feb. 27, even though it is down 1.1% this week, and Phillip Nova analyst Priyanka Sachdeva said “oil is trading on war longevity, not just headlines.” Sparta Commodities analyst Neil Crosby said traders were “all too aware” of the U.S. military build-up and the risk of another burst of weekend escalation. 4
The same price move is lifting BP’s peers. Analysts covering Chevron have raised first-quarter per-share earnings estimates by about 40% over the past month, while estimates for Shell’s net profit have gone up by an average 15%, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. “The first quarter is going to be phenomenal for these companies,” Leo Mariani, senior research analyst at Roth Capital Partners, said. 5
But the upside is not clean. Iraqi officials have asked BP to reduce output at the Rumaila field by 100,000 barrels per day to about 350,000 because storage is filling up while Hormuz exports remain blocked, and Macquarie analysts said oil prices could fall quickly if the war starts to wind down. 6
There is also a shareholder fight building before BP’s annual general meeting. Follow This and a group of European investors with $1 trillion under management have given the company until April 1 to add a climate resolution to the agenda or face court action; BP said it took legal advice and concluded the proposal was not valid. 7
Management has been trying to argue that the reset is about balance-sheet repair, not retreat. When BP announced the buyback halt and asset write-downs in February, finance chief Kate Thomson said the charges were “the accounting consequences” of tighter capital discipline, while RBC and Barclays backed the decision to put debt reduction ahead of repurchases. 2
The company has kept selling assets too. On March 19, BP agreed to sell its Gelsenkirchen refinery in Germany to Klesch Group, raised its structural cost-reduction target to $6.5 billion-$7.5 billion by 2027, and said divestments had passed $11 billion of its $20 billion goal. 8
BP is also due to pay its fourth-quarter dividend on Friday, with O’Neill set to take over next week. Whether the stock can push through its recent high may depend less on the reshuffle in St James’s Square than on whether Brent stays close to triple digits.
