Shares in battered oil giant BP took another pounding today amid fears that it will bow to growing political pressure by cutting dividends to help pay for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
The firm's shares fell over 4% to a new 20-month low as investors fretted over the prospect of the first cut in shareholder payments since 1992.
BP is under intense political pressure from US President Barack Obama, while chief executive Tony Hayward will come under heavy fire from angry US senators in a stormy Congressional hearing next week.
The president said Mr Hayward should be sacked in a television interview this week although the BP boss has said he would 'see this through to the end'.
Shares in the oil company plunged to their lowest level since October 2008 as the firm wrestles with the catastrophic impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20, which killed 11 workers.
BP - which has now lost 40% of its stock market value since the accident - provides crucial income for millions of pension savers, accounting for around £1 sterling in every £7 of blue-chip dividend payouts every year.
The company has so far refused to comment on the future of dividends, with the board due to make the decision at the end of July.
The firm is struggling to control the spill with a containment cap placed over the well last week, which collected 14,800 barrels on Monday and 7,800 barrels in the first half of yesterday before pumping the oil to a ship on the surface.
BP has said revenues from the recovered oil as well as liquid skimmed from the sea surface would be put into a new wildlife fund to help wildlife habitats along the coastline of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
