The Financial Times — BP insists it is not slowing green transition to cash in on high oil prices
The boss of BP’s US business has insisted that the company is sticking with its promised transition away from fossil fuels even though it plans an aggressive oil output increase in the country and is slowing down its planned production cuts elsewhere.
BP announced a scaling back of its climate goals last month as it unveiled record annual profits in 2022 after oil prices surged following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The company’s target to slash oil output by 40 per cent by 2030 — a strategy announced amid a historic oil price crash in 2020 — was reduced to 25 per cent. […]
As well as paring back its plan to cut oil output, BP also said capital investments to 2030 could increase by up to $16bn more than previously planned, representing up to $8bn more in both oil and gas and in its energy transition businesses. The changes mean that BP’s emissions will fall more slowly than planned by 2030. The US will be a crucial growth engine, especially in oil and gas, with targets for offshore Gulf of Mexico output to rise by almost 50 per cent to 400,000 barrels a day by the “mid-2020s” and onshore shale to increase by 30 to 40 per cent, to as much as 450,000 b/d by 2025. The oil production growth targets are among the most aggressive in the industry.
The US will be a crucial growth engine, especially in oil and gas, with targets for offshore Gulf of Mexico output to rise by almost 50 per cent to 400,000 barrels a day by the “mid-2020s” and onshore shale to increase by 30 to 40 per cent, to as much as 450,000 b/d by 2025.
The oil production growth targets are among the most aggressive in the industry. […]
But climate campaigners are disappointed by what they consider to be a significant shift in the company’s strategy. Mark van Baal, head of Follow This, an activist shareholder that has taken small stakes in Big Oil, said BP had “backtracked” on its emissions plan and could no longer claim to be aligned with the Paris climate deal.
