BP’s green pivot has backfired spectacularly, hammering profits and leaving the company vulnerable to a hedge fund siege, writes Jonathan Leake in the Telegraph. Here’s an excerpt:
Addressing journalists and executives at the Royal Lancaster Hotel overlooking Hyde Park, Bernard Looney, BP’s new Chief Executive, urged them to “reimagine” his company as a champion of green power.
By 2030, BP would have cut oil and gas production by 40%, he pledged, with the lost fossil fuel income replaced by wind farms, solar parks and biofuels made from plants.
He said: “BP has been an international oil company for over a century… Now we are pivoting to become an integrated energy company.
“We believe our new strategy provides a comprehensive and coherent approach to turn our Net Zero ambition into action. This coming decade is critical for the world in the fight against climate change.”
Five years on from that speech in February 2020, the company is beleaguered by a ruthless activist investor, under pressure to boost its flatlining share price and considering a return to the oil and gas exploration that made it so successful to begin with.
The abrupt turn follows decades of crisis at one of Britain’s most venerable institutions. Today, its future is more uncertain than ever.
The Net Zero plans unveiled by Looney have hammered profits and generated intense speculation about a takeover, break up or even a merger with arch-rival Shell.
This month the fears became real with revelations that Elliott, a Florida-based hedge fund and corporate raider, has built a £3.8 billion stake in BP – and is laying siege to the company.
On Wednesday, BP will face the ultimate test at its capital markets day when Murray Auchincloss, the company’s current chief executive, will seek to persuade sceptical investors that he can deliver a “fundamental reset”.
To win round doubters, he is expected to announce a major break with the last five years – shifting away from Net Zero and back towards its oil and gas heritage.
But many in the City are asking how a company of BP’s size and stature has found itself in this position in the first place….
BP’s Net Zero pledges were backed by precise numbers.
Looney promised that by 2030 BP would boost investment in renewables tenfold from $500 million (£395 million) to $5 billion and build windfarms and solar parks with a capacity of 50 gigawatts – roughly enough to supply the whole UK on a windy and sunny day.
Over the same period it would slash oil and gas production from the equivalent of 2.6 million barrels of oil a day to 1.5 million. Refining throughput would drop from 1.7 million barrels a day to just 1.2 million. …
It did not take long for problems to start emerging.
After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, oil and gas prices spiked. The surge rained cash down on fossil fuel producers, including BP. However, it raised questions as to why the company was pulling back from such a profitable market.
In February 2023, after a blockbuster $28 billion profits for 2022 linked to the global energy crisis, Looney was forced to slash his pledge to cut production by 40% by the end of the decade to a more modest 25%.
BP’s shareholders had realised that the green spending they supported in 2020 had halved their dividends. Total shareholder returns had underperformed Shell by 15%, France’s TotalEnergies by 30%, Chevron by 60% and ExxonMobil by 100%. …
Few of Looney’s 2020 promised renewable energy projects have materialised.
Earlier this month BP used its 2024 results day to announce that those that have been built – such as its 10 US windfarms – are to be sold. Its other wind assets (mostly planning approvals, including around the UK), are to be shunted into an independent joint venture.
BP Lightsource, BP’s solar subsidiary, is still building solar farms – but these are then sold on, meaning no long-term investment or income.
Pushed by analysts, Auchincloss, Looney’s replacement, confirmed a halt to all investment in wind and solar. “We have completely decapitalised renewables,” he said.
The same results showed BP made $8.9 billion in underlying profit compared with $13.8 billion in 2023 – its worst annual result since 2020, the year of the pandemic.
In response, Auchincloss promised a wave of new oil and gas production, including BP’s sixth hub in the Gulf of Mexico. The Kaskida development will soon be producing 80,000 barrels of crude oil a day, with other developments planned in Iraq, India, Brazil, Egypt and the UK’s North Sea.
Overall, he has suggested BP’s oil production will rise by 2-3% a year until 2030.
All that, say analysts, completely contradicts the “zombie” Net Zero strategy bequeathed by Looney – as well as offering a strong clue as to what Auchincloss’s “fundamental reset” will include – a full-blooded return to oil and gas.
Worth reading in full.
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What the company’s low valuation does is leave BP at risk of a take over as opposed to hedge funds. Any of the major oil companies could launch a bid for BP. There is also a chance that BP could relocate to the NYSE to improve value after all, the Student Union government is doing everything to drive them away, building on what Jeremy kHunt of the previous socialist Uniparty government did. They work mainly outside the UK and when the big eared moron US President was hammering ‘British Petroleum’ by allowing all and sundry to screw money out of them following the incompetence of an American company over Deepwater Horizon, the majority of shareholders are in the US.
the name does fit, ‘Looney promised that by 2030 BP would boost investment in renewables tenfold’
Lunatic indeed. I hope they go teats up.
I hope they go teats up.
So do I.
Breaking news: as expected the CDU has got most votes in Germany followed by AfD but not enough to govern. Gateway Pundit has a telling map showing Germany is dominated by CDU in the Far Lest West Germany while AfD rules in the freedom loving East Germany. Time for the country to separate once again. Berlin is still dominated by the fascists as expected.
And 13% voted for the Greens too – it beggars belief.
As Adam Smith said, there’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.
Germany is back in the early 1930s, or did it ever really leave?
A vote for Green is a mental health condition..
And 13% voted for the Greens too – it beggars belief.
Yes, it does. I don’t understand some people.
Maybe this is wake up and smell the coffee time for the CDU. They can either respect the way people have voted and form a coalition with AfD or continue their childish pretence that AfD are Nazis, represent an existential threat to Germany and refuse to work with them. If CDU try and cobble together an anti AfD coalition it’ll be chronically weak and will collapse in 2-3 years meaning another election when AfD will probably get an even larger share of the vote.
So… so- called renewable energy is not a viable business model – well, I’ll got to the foot of our stairs.
And all the £multi-million paid executives of car companies, energy companies, banks and financial institutions didn’t see this until their fantasy collided with reality?
I think there’s a strong case for shareholders to sue directors for breach of fiduciary duty, professional negligence and fraudulent use of shareholders’ property.
I don’t understand why the law suits aren’t flying. Seems odd.
Aren’t they just obeying the Law?
If you published that on 1st April, I’d assume it was a joke.
“...a full-blooded return to oil and gas.”
And who will be the fortunate recipients of all the Black Gold because it certainly won’t be us Brits given Kneel and Millibrain’s murderous commitment to Nut Zero ? We are off to the Stone Ages.
Looney by name, looney by nature. BP let down by succession of highly-rewarded CEO’s lacking wherewithal to see climate claptrap for what it is.
Fat cats devoid of basic physics nous of energy density, gradient and continuity of provision, that make BP’s core products superior to inherently intermittent capture of wind energy, superseded three centuries ago for good reason by emergence of King Coal.
Too much pandering to climate fallacy, fantasy and folly, not enough critical thinking, insight and independent thought.
Executive pay down the drain. Long overdue for the fat cats to put money into bottoming out once and for all on the abiotic theory of oil synthesis deep inside the earth’s crust. What a game changer that could be for humanity, the oil industry and BP’s share price.
Evidence for concept of synthesis of oil from calcium carbonate, ferrous oxide and water, under laboratory conditions of high temperature and pressure, comparable to the upper mantle of the earth’s crust…
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/215/1/012103/pdf
…Published in 2010 in a peer-reviewed scientific paper, entitled, “Synthesis of hydrocarbons under upper mantle conditions: evidence for the theory of abiotic deep petroleum origin.”
Cue pearl clutching by luxury true believers in settled climate science, at the prospect of funding follow-up research to probe this intriguing prospect.
‘Looney’ – could anyone have a more apt name
The clue was in his name
Bernard Looney?……please stop. My stomach is aching from laughing
including BP’s sixth hub in the Gulf of Mexico
Don’t you mean the Gulf of America!
Looney by name ……..
Is there any chance that Looney could be sued for the damage he has done to BP and lose his pension, savings, home, shares etc? Sort of a reverse bonus.
What do they expect if they put a Looney in charge? That’s not based on his surname! It’s just apt!
Why not just keep your core business, diversify into new markets if they are financially viable (without Govt grants and kickbacks), and invest to reduce pollution and environmental degradation.
Being an oil and gas company and having net zero ambitions will create some irreconcilable issues.