BP To Sell Some Oil Projects To Meet Paris Climate Goals

UK oil and gas supermajor BP considers selling some heavily carbon-intensive oil projects and not develop others in order to have its business compatible with the Paris Climate Agreement, BP’s chief executive officer Bob Dudley said at a conference call.

“There are going to be projects that we don’t do, things that we might have done in the past. Certain kinds of oil, for example, that has a different carbon footprint,” Dudley said in a call organized by JP Morgan, as carried by Fortune.  

The comments from the top manager of one of the largest oil companies in the world come as Big Oil has been facing increased investor pressure to start addressing climate change risks and set emission reduction targets if the world is ever to achieve the Paris Agreement targets.

“We are certain we’ve got a path, it may not be linear, to being consistent with Paris goals,” Dudley said.

BP is considering selling some of the most carbon-intensive projects in its portfolio, its CEO said, but declined to name specific projects because those projects have partners and governments involved in them as well.

BP, like the other supermajors, has come under shareholder pressure to start aligning its business to the Paris Agreement targets.

Earlier this year, BP’s shareholders voted in favour of a climate change shareholder resolution, pushing the UK oil and gas supermajor to set out a business strategy consistent with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.

Earlier this week, BP said that would begin deploying continuous measurement of methane emissions in its future BP-operated oil and gas processing projects as part of program to detect, measure, and reduce methane emissions.  

Last week, Carbon Tracker warned that Big Oil is currently betting US$50 billion  on oil and gas projects that would be unviable in a low-carbon world. The US$1.3-billion Zinia 2 deepwater project led by BP