Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, must struggle to find space on his mantelpiece these days. Last week, he was voted the UK’s most impressive businessman for the sixth time in the Financial Times’ annual survey. Wednesday’s trading statement for the super major was, in contrast, rather dull. The negative impact of last year’s hurricanes was as expected.

Investors should be preparing for another storm, however. Soaring crude prices have rendered stock picking almost redundant. In January 2002, BP enjoyed a premium to the lowest-rated of the European oil stocks in terms of multiples of enterprise value to debt-adjusted cash flow of 7 times. That gap now stands at just 2.5 times. Oil price momentum has underpinned that compression. But analysts expect Brent crude in the mid-$50s per barrel this year, little changed on 2005. Citigroup reckons smaller oil stocks, more leveraged to Brent’s swings, need an oil price north of $66 to justify their current rating. Meanwhile, cost inflation means the industry’s upstream return on capital employed of 25 per cent last year was roughly the same as in 2000, when Brent traded at $28.