Last week, British oil announced that it would reduce more than $ 5 billion in planned green energy investments. It has been a remarkable exit since the early first decade of the twentieth century, when the oil giant described itself as “behind oil”, and Until 2020When the company targeted 20 times increasing the renewable energy resources portfolio.
“Today, we have resett the BP strategy,” said Murray Usinglos, CEO of BP. As part of the latest ad.. “This is the BP reset, with a constant focus on the growth of the value of the shareholders in the long run.”
BP is not the only oil giant that declines its climatic obligations. coincidence And the state -controlled Norway Timing Similar moves have also been taken recently. However, although the news has occupied the headlines, experts say that the moves will not have a little impact on making the largest renewable energy resources – and that the proposed increase for companies in the production of fossil fuels is more concerned.
“I do not see goals for the goals of renewable energy sources of special importance. Rich Colit White, a carbon -tracking carbon analyst, wrote a non -profit research tank looking for the impact of climate change on financial markets, in an e -mail:“ The oil and gas sector represents a small share of clean energy investment. ” According to the International Energy AgencyThe sector represents only 1 percent of the total.
White said: “Clean energy investment is still increasing in the world – it does not come from the oil and gas sector,” said White. “The changes they make on production goals are more important.”
At the same time that BP has reduced renewable energy resources portfolio, it said it would invest $ 10 billion in oil and gas. The company now aims to produce 2.4 million barrels per day of fossil fuel by 2030, which is a 60 percent jumps from its previous goal. The difference is 900,000 barrels up to about An additional 387,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide every day -The equivalent of about 90,000 gas powers for a year.
“Even before these renewable declines, almost all oil specialties have been closed in the production of new oil and gas,” explained by Kelly Traffic, director of research at Oil Change International, a defense organization aimed at facilitating a fair transition to clean energy. A A report from the organization last May I found that six of the eight largest oil companies have clear targets to increase oil and gas production. Since then, Traffic says this has grown into seven companies, with Shell’s being the only exception.
These obligations come at a time when the oil market has already appears signs of saturation. Of 2,206 active lease contracts in the Gulf, Only the fifth produces the oilAccording to Records From the Ocean Energy Management Office, which regulates drilling abroad. White says that, regardless of the climate, the carbon tracking “will warn against locking in new long -cycle developments that may need high oil/gas prices to be able to compete.”
However, President Donald Trump urged the United States to “drill, child, drilling.” In the first month since the restoration, it has its management Energy emergency declared It aims to enable the government to intensify the extraction of fossil fuels, The opposite of the endowment on liquefied natural gas exportsAnd install a Former CEO of Natural Gas as head of the Ministry of Energy. At the same time, Trump also has Frozen a lot of money Among the climatic bills of President Joe Biden, the law to reduce inflation and the infrastructure law from the two parties.
“Trump and the current management are given these companies a pass to maintain their polluted practices,” said Mayar Sorur, director of Beyond Fossil Policy Program at Sierra. “It is not surprising that these companies follow [Trump’s] Lead. ”
In the BP Declaration, the company similarly launches its previous obligations to clean energy. “Our optimism for fasting [energy] The transition was inappropriate, ” Uchinkens said. “We went very far, very quickly.”
Decides like BP are in some ways to put naked what activists have long argued: the obligations were not sincere from the beginning. “Many of these tactics were simple to wash green,” Sor said, adding that the momentum would continue regardless. “We are on our way to the transmission of green energy.”
Now that the oil companies have shown their intentions, TROT monitors whether investors and governments will respond to any recovery against production increases. She said that the significant cuts in warming emissions from the planet cannot happen without gradual disposal of fossil fuels – it is clear that future oil companies are not imagined.
She said, “We will not simply solve the climate crisis by adding renewable energy to the top of fossil fuels.” “It is a moment in fact.”
