As the price of oil moves upwards, expectations are that BP’s fortunes will also be gathering momentum. This week, the company is set to reveal its results for the third quarter, and forecasts are positive.

The price of oil recently hit a four-year high and some commentators think it could reach $100 a barrel by the end of the year – a price not seen since 2014. Looming Iranian sanctions in November, supply problems in the US and a lack of spare capacity among the big Opec producers are all conspiring to drive the price up.

It is widely expected that BP will continue to see the benefit and report positive numbers on Tuesday.

The upturn for the company comes after years of being dogged by the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. In January, the company said it was nearing the end of the $65bn (£47bn) compensation process.

BP had been hamstrung in recent years by the legacy of the explosion and oil spill at the Macondo well, which killed 11 people and caused huge environmental damage. But chief executive Bob Dudley has said that 2017 felt like a turning point, and this week’s results are expected to show a company that is continuing to emerge from the aftermath of that disaster.

The second quarter was already starting to tell “a story of a turnaround”, according to analysts Hargreaves Lansdown. “Payments associated with the Deepwater Horizon disaster are falling, while a higher oil price boosted revenues in Q2. That helped second-quarter profit hit $2.8bn, way ahead of the $684m from a year before.”

Graham Spooner, from The Share Centre, said the rising price of oil should have a clear effect. “We have seen steadily improving numbers from the oil majors as oil prices have steadied, but for the third quarter, when oil prices breached $85 a barrel, a significant improvement in profitability should be expected. This is on the proviso that production did not suffer any setbacks – and judging by the first half, plant reliability and uptime was high,” he said.

“Investors should expect production to rise, though, as new production facilities have come online, while we will also see the inclusion of production from the acquisition of shale assets from BP.”

Across the board, the oil industry is currently reaping the benefits of the boom.

Last week, the Norwegian oil and gas firm Equinor, formerly known as Statoil, announced earnings before interest and taxes of $4.8bn for the third quarter, slightly below market expectations but almost double what it made last year. French oil giant Total raised its production growth target for 2018 after a new record output, and high oil prices during the third quarter enabled it to report its highest net income in a quarter since 2012.

During the summer, BP agreed to buy US shale oil and gas fields from the Anglo-Australian mining group BHP for $10.5bn (£8bn), the firm’s biggest acquisition in nearly two decades. Dudley lauded the deal as transformational and industry watchers said it significantly beefed up the company’s shale presence in America, which had been small compared to its peers.

Oil prices have slumped and soared in recent years. As recently as 2016, Opec overproduction and rising US shale output created a glut, pushing the global benchmark Brent and US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude prices to less than $30 a barrel. Since then prices have recovered to about $76 for Brent.