BP case studies

BP wants you to think it’s doing its bit for the climate, by saying that it will go ‘net zero’ by 2050. But its plans are nowhere near enough to curb climate breakdown.

In 2018 BP made £5.6 billion in profits but paid no tax in the UK – instead, it received £133 million in tax credits from the public purse.

The British Museum’s current blockbuster exhibition, I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria, is sponsored by its regular partner, the oil giant BP. This is painfully ironic, given that many of the objects on display were originally looted by the British from modern-day Iraq, and BP was one of the biggest profiteers […]

“In Basra you see the wealth pouring out of the community every day – from oilfields over there, less than a kilometre from where we are sitting – and then you see the poverty and lack of employment in the villages, while companies import thousands of foreign workers.” – Ali, who was involved in the […]

‘BP, ExxonMobil and others have systematically been grabbing control over the Iraqi oil industry ever since the US invasion… The people of Iraq gain very little from their own oil industry and in fact have to ask how does it benefit us at all? We get environmental problems, higher cancer rates, but the money doesn’t […]

“In Basra, all the wars weren’t enough for us to die in them, it became outdated that we died by bullet or by car accident. Now, even the taps kill us, the very taps that are the sources of water to our houses.” – Khalid Tawfiq Hadi   Southern Iraq is facing a water crisis. […]

“The smell is bad, the waste enormous, and the environmental impact appalling.” – a World Bank employee on encountering gas flaring at BP’s Rumaila oilfield BP’s long-term plans for its Iraqi oilfields directly contradict the urgent need to leave fossil fuels in the ground and transition rapidly to a zero carbon world. At the moment, […]

 “When I saw there would be a special exhibition on my culture and my history, I was ecstatic because for once, my culture’s beauty would be celebrated – but finding out the sponsor was BP was a massive slap in the face. These are the very same sponsors who advocated for the war which destroyed […]

‘Iraq is the big oil prospect. BP are desperate to get in there.’ – UK Foreign Office memo, 6 November 2002 Minutes of a meeting between BP and the UK Foreign Office reveal how, just a few months before the 2003 US/UK invasion and occupation of Iraq, BP was lobbying the British government to help the […]

A group that includes many leading climate scientists have lodged a formal complaint with the Science Museum, accusing it of ‘undermining its integrity as a scientific institution’ by partnering with BP, Shell and Statoil despite their continued contribution to climate change.

BP’s massive gas extraction project in West Papua is helping to legitimise the region’s illegal occupation by Indonesia.

BP was initially forced to put a flagship project on hold when, in 2011, residents of the town of Idku mobilised against a plan to build a mega-gas plant next to their homes. But then new repressive laws were introduced and BP went ahead with its original plan – only at a greater profit.

It’s no coincidence that BP – a company behind a record-breaking oil spill that continues to drill for new fossil fuels – sponsors a range of iconic cultural institutions that provide a cost-effective way of cleaning up its image.

‘Iraq is the big oil prospect,’ began the minutes of a meeting at the Foreign Office. ‘BP are desperate to get in there.’ Four months later, a war would begin that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and destroy a country. But with about ten percent of the world’s oil beneath its soil, for BP Iraq meant business.

Eight years ago, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, causing the largest marine oil spill in history. BP was ultimately deemed to be responsible for the disaster — but at the time, you wouldn’t have known it.

Oil companies have successfully lobbied to block numerous climate regulations and undermine support for clean energy.

Oil companies have caused huge damage by spreading doubt about the seriousness of climate change and fuelling climate science denial.

June 2018 Fossil fuels are big money, and those who manage the companies which extract them aren’t exactly known for turning down their multi-million-dollar bonuses.

If countries are serious about limiting climate change, approximately 80 percent of the fossil fuels we already know about will need to be left in the ground. However, the business models of major oil companies rely on continuing to use fossil fuels at similar levels over the coming decades. This puts them on a direct collision course with genuine efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

When BP announced, with much fanfare, that it was changing its name to ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and changing its logo to the now-familiar green sunflower in 2000, critics were quick to point out that the company had spent more on the rebrand than it had on renewable energy the previous year.

In 2015, BP was named as the company doing the most to obstruct climate action in the EU. According to research by the NGO Influence Map, BP topped the table as Europe’s biggest corporate advocate of dirty energy, and was ‘consistently opposed to all the main forms of climate change regulation’.

BP’s fracking in Argentina faces strong opposition from local people, including Indigenous Mapuche communities. Argentina has the world’s second biggest reserve of shale gas after China, with resources concentrated in the highlands of Vaca Muerta which has been dubbed a ‘carbon bomb’.

BP has been accused of complicity in human rights abuses and environmental damage in Colombia. And although it sold its Colombian assets in 2010, the fight for justice for the people affected by its operations still continues.

Even as efforts to tackle climate change intensify, BP is exploring for new drilling opportunities around the world

The company spent over $2bn on exploration alone last year and is choosing increasingly risky projects in ever more dangerous and sensitive environments.