Stormy weather: BP’s stock hits new low

Fears of tropical storms slamming into BP’s oil-spill cleanup struggle in the Gulf of Mexico sent the company’s shares diving to a new 52-week low yesterday — and pumping up the total value lost since April 20 to $105 billion.

While crews fought a series of setbacks hampering their efforts all week, meteorologists kept a nervous eye on a tropical depression swirling nearby over the Caribbean that has an 80 percent chance of turning into a storm during the next 48 hours, the US National Hurricane Center said last night.

Complicating the storm watch is the need to warn workers at least five days in advance of storms in order to shut down operations and protect vital gear from damage. Weather experts said storms move so quickly there might not be enough time to properly warn the armada of 4,500 vessels involved in the cleanup efforts and drilling of two relief wells.

“In the event that a storm crosses over the oil spill area, operations would almost certainly have to be suspended — both cleanup and the drilling of the two relief wells,” said analyst Pavel Molchanov, at Raymond James & Associates.

Meanwhile, investors saw their holdings in BP shrink another 6 percent yesterday, as shares slid to $27.02, or nearly 54 percent this year.

When the oil rig crisis erupted on April 20 with a deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP was the world’s No. 5 company in market value — worth $189.4 billion. Today, it’s worth barely $85 billion, or about what Spain’s Telefonica is worth.

If storms don’t strike, BP plans next week to double its capacity for siphoning oil gushing from its ruptured deep-sea well.

The Internal Revenue Service ruled yesterday it would collect taxes on claims for lost wages and emotional distress — but money collected for physical injuries or property losses would be tax-free.