MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd August, 2020) The United Kingdom's BP oil and gas giant has used money aimed at implementing the company's transition to a low carbon economy to purchase shares in businesses involved in finding and using fossil fuels, a leading environmental organization said on Monday in a press release.
Greenpeace's whistleblowing project, Unearthed, has analyzed BP's portfolio through the market data platform, CB Insights, and found that it supported companies that contribute to climate change by extracting and using fossil fuels.
"The oil giant BP has used money from a "low carbon transition" fund to buy shares in companies developing new ways to find and use fossil fuels, Unearthed can reveal," the press release said.
According to the whistleblowing project, BP invested in a number of companies, including one that uses artificial intelligence to extract oil, a private jet app developer and a firm that generates carbon emissions from fossil fuels to create animal and fish feed.
"It made its latest investment of this kind as recently as April, just eight days after CEO Bernard Looney, in an update to investors, again claimed that his ambition is 'to make BP a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and help the world achieve the same goal,'" the press release added.
In particular, the oil giant as a sole investor has allocated only $31.3 million to businesses seeking to reduce the use of fossil fuels and $13.9 million to those having no impact on the climate, while it spent $95 million on companies that help find, extract or use fossil fuels, Unearthed said, adding that when it asked BP to provide more data, the company refused.
Initially, BP announced in February its ambition to shift to a net-zero emissions company by 2050 or sooner, becoming the first company among energy giants to make such a pledge. BP's commitment followed the pledges made by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The latter's European Green Deal aims to make the entire European Union carbon neutral in the span of 30 years.
