Street Wire: BP Bankruptcy Unlikely, Analyst Says

A BP (BP) bankruptcy looks unlikely despite the beating the energy giant's stock and bonds have taken over the Gulf oil spill, as the cash the company generates is more than adequate to cover costs related to the disaster, a Citigroup (C) analyst told clients Thursday.

There should also be more than enough cash for BP to reliably pay it's dividend, according to research by Citi analyst Mark Fletcher, but political pressure could force BP to skip its next distribution. By the analyst's reckoning, BP is generating about $20 billion a year over above its capital expenditures through 2014.

"At this stage it is difficult to define the worst case outcome for BP, only reasonable to say that there is a long tail to the expected distribution and that we believe a range of costs around $3 billion to $8 billion all in net to BP is reasonable," Fletcher wrote.