The world is moving in the wrong direction in its fight against climate change, and BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said that energy companies must step up and play their part to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
The reality is the world isn\u2019t even close to on track to meet the recent Paris climate accord goal of keeping a global temperature rise below 2-degrees Celsius by 2100. On the current track, global energy demand will spike by about one-third by 2040, including growing demand for crude oil and other liquid fuels before eventually plateauing, according to BP\u2019s analysis that Dudley highlighted Tuesday at the CERAWeek conference in Houston.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs bright as our future may seem, we are operating in a world that is not on a sustainable path,\u201d Dudley said. \u201cGreenhouse gases are expected to rise by about 10 percent over the next two decades, when they need to be falling dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dudley cited possible solutions, like federal regulators pushing the coal industry out of the power sector, and governments worldwide adopting more carbon prices, or taxes, on energy companies.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to move from being pure-play oil and gas companies into broader energy businesses,\u201d Dudley said. \u201cOur focus has to be on developing an energy system that is cleaner, better and kinder to the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
BP remains the top producer in the Gulf of Mexico with more growth on the way and, in October, BP paid $10.5 billion to buy the onshore Texas shale assets of Australia\u2019s BHP Billiton, including sizable positions in the booming Permian Basin and South Texas\u2019 Eagle Ford shale.<\/p>\n
Last year, BP said it would hold greenhouse gas emissions from its operations at or below its 2015 levels in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
While natural gas burns cleaner than oil, the challenge is ensuring that methane doesn\u2019t leak during the drilling and production of gas. Those emissions are viewed as the Achilles\u2019 heel of natural gas. So BP is setting a target of keeping its methane emissions down to 0.2 percent of the gas produced.<\/p>\n
Dudley said the British energy giant must be \u201cprogressive for society and pragmatic for investors,\u201d and nimble enough to shift as the market changes. At the beginning of this century, BP invested heavily in renewable energy, perhaps before it was economically viable.<\/p>\n
The company lost money then. Now, it\u2019s strategically investing again on a smaller scale.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe continue to invest in low carbon \u2013 to the tune of around half-a-billion dollars a year \u2013 but in smaller, smarter, very focused and disciplined ways,\u201d Dudley said.<\/p>\n
Earlier Tuesday,\u00a0Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell\u2019s U.S. subsidiary, Shell Oil of Houston, called on the White House to tighten the rules on methane leaks from oil and gas production, rather than roll them back as proposed by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to do more,\u201d Watkins said.<\/p>\n
But some environmental groups, including Greenpeace, are calling BP hypocritical for lobbying the White House to roll back some methane emissions regulations.<\/p>\n
BP responded that it doesn\u2019t oppose methane regulations per se. Rather, it prefers one set of rules, instead of having to follow the different ones put in place by different agencies, in this case the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.<\/p>\n
This article first appeared on the Houston Chronicle \u2013 an Energy Voice content partner.\u00a0For more from the Houston Chronicle click here.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The world is moving in the wrong direction in its fight against climate change, and BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said that energy companies must step up and play their part to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46,48,57,90,96,107,113,137,139,160,174,183,184,201,202,209,230,232,233,244,246,249,256,267,277,279,288],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aramco","tag-athens","tag-baroudi","tag-democracy","tag-doha","tag-embargo","tag-energy-peace","tag-gas","tag-gazprom","tag-international-maritime-disputes","tag-lebanon","tag-maritime-boundaries-east-mediterranean","tag-maritime-disputes","tag-offshore","tag-oil","tag-opec","tag-poverty-alleviation","tag-putin","tag-qatar","tag-rosneft","tag-roudi","tag-russia","tag-saudi","tag-straddling-hydrocarbons-reserves","tag-total","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emimer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}