‘Green’ BP is backsliding on climate targets and failing to invest in renewables

Society is apparently calling for more oil... but is that true or is BP simply kowtowing to gas-guzzling shareholders, asks James Moore

BP’s corporate colours are green but does the company’s behaviour pass the eco-test? (Getty)

So goodbye “green” BP? Was it ever really that way? The oil major, as these companies do, likes to produce a bewildering array of different numbers to describe its profits. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted profits, underlying profits, good old-fashioned pre-tax profits, they all have one thing in common this time around. They were all huge. The most commonly quoted was “underlying profits”. They came in at a record $28bn (£23bn) over 12 months.

We should probably debate whether quoting a company’s favoured measure, as always seems to happen, is the right thing to do but that’s one for another day. There was a much bigger story in the numbers: BP is dramatically scaling back what had been viewed as one of the most ambitious low-carbon transformation programmes in the industry.

CEO Bernard Looney, with his electric vehicles and what have you, is such an apparent greenie that he was recently derogatorily referred to as a “husky hugger” by one columnist.