Oil prices could hit low point in Q1 -BP's Dudley

Struggling oil producers could suffer even more pain in 2016 with further plunges in already record-low prices, BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley warned. The crude price is now running at $37.

"A low point could be in the first quarter", Bob Dudley said on Saturday, adding that the prices are likely to stabilize towards the end of the year.

In January 2015, Boss of BP had told the BBC his company was planning for depressed oil prices for years and that petrol prices in the United Kingdom could fall below £1 a litre.

Dudley was quoted by the BBC as describing the fire on the Deepwater Horizon and its aftermath as a "near death experience" for the company.

"I think the term overstates it quite frankly and I have spoken to the governor about it and I have questioned that term", Dudley said, . "For sure, there is a boom-and-bust cycle here". He said he disagreed with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney's use of this term to describe oil and gas reserves held by companies that may not be feasible to produce as the world shifts to a low-carbon economy.

The main talking point of the radio interview was BP's giant oil spill from a rig off the United States coast in 2010.

It was one of the worst environmental disasters in the United States and saw BP pay fines and compensation and sell off more than £30billion ($45billion) in assets.

He said it had shaken the company "to its core" and led to a complete change in its organisational structure. "It was a forced focussing down of what we do, it was this is what we need to do to survive".