Oil Poised to Climb 20% as BP Shutdown Shows Industry Distress

(Bloomberg) — BP Plc’s shutdown of the largest U.S. oil field may be the first of many, as decaying pipelines threaten to add 20 percent to energy prices in the next decade.

“We’ll look back on this event as the Pearl Harbor Day in energy,” said Matthew Simmons, chairman of energy investment bank Simmons & Co. International in Houston. The chance that the leaks and corrosion found at Prudhoe Bay by BP, Europe’s second- largest oil company, are an isolated occurrence is “zero,” said Simmons, who’s writing a book on aging oil infrastructure.
Bloomberg