BP Boss Widens Transatlantic Rift in Energy Industry over Climate Change

BP has threatened to widen a rift between European and US oil companies over how to respond to global warming by urging political leaders to deliver a “substantial” deal at international climate change talks later this year.

Bob Dudley, chief executive of the British oil and gas group, said the United Nations global warming summit in December needed to broker agreements that encourage energy efficiency, renewable power such as wind and the use of gas.  Such moves are considered vital if global governments are to succeed in keeping the Earth’s temperatures from rising more than 2C, the internationally agreed threshold to prevent widespread flooding, famine and desertification.

Asked what he wanted to see from the UN conference in Paris, Dudley said:

Something substantial needs to be done.  We are conscious of that ... we encourage policymakers to move forward on this when they meet in December.”

His comments came amid signs of a transatlantic rift in the oil and gas industry over how to tackle global warming.  Last week, BP and a group of European oil companies including Shell and Total of France wrote a letter to the Financial Times calling for “widespread and effective” carbon pricing to be part of a Paris deal.  But that move was dismissed by John Watson, chief executive of US-based Chevron, who said he had declined to sign the letter and believed that putting a price on carbon emissions was unworkable.

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