BP's under-par profits fuel demands for a break-up

Analysts expect BP to say its second-quarter profit rose a fifth to $6 billion (£3.68 billion), mainly due to rocketing crude prices. But that represents much slower growth than other majors: Royal Dutch Shell, for example, is set to report quarterly profits up 60% to £4 billion. BP's output is also set be much lower - down 11% on the year - because Dudley has sold off oilfields worth $25 billion to pay for last year's Gulf of Mexico disaster.

Analysts at banks including UBS, Bank of America and JPMorgan Cazenove now predict BP could unlock as much as $100 billion for investors, either by splitting its upstream exploration and production division from its refining and marketing arm, or selling off its entire US business.

BP's shares are still trading 28% lower than they were at the time of the Macondo spill in April, despite oil prices soaring to $127 a barrel this year. Shell is up 13% over the same period.

Earlier this month, US crude giant ConocoPhillips announced it would spin off its refining assets, reigniting the focus on whether BP should do the same.

JPMorgan oil analyst Fred Lucas has led the calls, claiming: "The merits of vertical integration are left ever more in doubt."

Clive Beagles, a JO Hambro analyst, agreed, telling Bloomberg: "Perhaps [BP] needs to take as radical a route as ConocoPhillips, or articulate a better strategy. On a sum of the parts basis, BP is ludicrously undervalued."

Paul Mumford, fund manager at Cavendish Asset Management, added: "Investors feel that the company has slightly lost its way. You need to have some clear guidance on where the company is going in the future, and how they are going to advance their strategy."

The calls pile the pressure on Dudley, brought in to replace Tony Hayward nine months ago after the oil spill disaster. His plan to reinvigorate BP was based on a $16 billion Arctic tie-up with Kremlin-owned Rosneft, but that failed embarrassingly. AAR, the oligarchs who co-own BP's Russian joint venture TNK-BP, took the British firm to court and refused to allow the deal to go ahead.

Apart from a $7.2 billion deal in India and a £3 billion investment in a North Sea field, Dudley is still focused on sell-offs, including the Texas City and Carson refineries in the US. His plan also includes another $5 billion asset sales, yet to be announced.