Sector movers: Oil and gas shares spike on BP's settlement, no respite for metal companies

Oil and gas stocks led the London market higher on Thursday as news of BP’s settlement with the US authorities over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill trickled out later on in the session.

At 16:12 BST, the blue chip FTSE 100 was trading marginally in the green up by 21.83 points or 0.33% at 6,630.42. In a late afternoon statement, BP (up 4.69%) said it had reached agreements in principle to settle all federal and state claims arising from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill at a cost of up to $18.7bn spread over 18 years.

Not only did the blue chip oil major benefit itself from the settlement, the news sent a plethora of oil and gas related stocks higher, with the sector’s headline index leading the London market up by 2.40%. Midcaps Tullow Oil (up 5.47%) and Cairn Energy (up 2.82%) were in the green as were BP’s blue chip rivals BG Group (up 1.18%) and Royal Dutch Shell (‘a’ shares up 1.14%); all of whom managed to shake-off a lacklustre day of trading on the oil futures market.

Nonetheless, traders still moved cautiously with no end in sight to the Greek debt crisis at least until after the country's referendum in on 5 July. Miners Glencore, Anglo American and BHP Billiton were lifted as metal prices tentatively recovered from a three-day decline.

However, stocks with a direct industrial metals connect continued to suffer with Evraz (down 7.71%), Lonmin (down 4.56%) and Acacia Mining (down 3.68%) among the biggest FTSE 250 fallers of the session.

Elsewhere, financial services stocks continued to trade lower with the segment index down by 1.05% and familiar names – including ICAP (down 3.92%), Hargreaves Lansdown (down 3.12%), Man Group (down 2.84%), Aberdeen Asset Management (down 1.79%) and ADVFN (down 1.57%) – all trading lower.