BP Shares Tumble After Company Announces Rising Cleanup Costs

UPDATE: BP shares are down in New York Friday, falling over 4% to $27.53 in early afternoon trading.

BP (BP) shares tumbled in London trading on Friday after the company announced that the cost of responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has risen to $2.35 billion.

BP's stock fell as low as 296.6 pence ($4.42), a drop of 8.9%, the Associated Press reported. The decline took shares to well below half the price of 655 pence that they were trading at on April 20, the day the Deepwater Horizon disaster ruptured an oil well and killed 11 workers.

The investment "was not one for the faint-hearted," analysts at Collins Stewart said in a research note earlier this month. The analysts continued to recommend BP shares as a buy in a note released Friday.

U.S. official estimates say the leak is disgorging as much as 60,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf each day. Last week, BP agreed to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund to cover damages caused by the leak.