[HN Gopher] BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy
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BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy
Author : baanist
Score : 44 points
Date : 2024-10-08 22:13 UTC (46 minutes ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > BP (BP.L), opens new tab has abandoned a target to cut oil and
| gas output by 2030 as CEO Murray Auchincloss scales back the
| firm's energy transition strategy to regain investor confidence,
| three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
|
| > The company continues to target net zero emissions by 2050. "As
| Murray said at the start of year... the direction is the same -
| but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused, and
| higher value company," a BP spokesperson said.
|
| Bit confused by the discrepancy of these statements. Is this
| because this is an insider source that has not been officially
| announced (seems like it), or are they saying "We still plan to
| cut emissions by 2050... maybe sometime later" (seems less
| likely).
| tw04 wrote:
| They're claiming to target 2050 in the hopes that the EU won't
| come down on them with a sledge hammer.
|
| The fact they've cut all targets for 2030, and cut back all
| renewable plans tells you there's no actual plan to hit net
| zero.
|
| This was a pretty obvious end result when the head of their
| renewables group resigned in April and instead of replacing her
| they decided to "shrink the executive group" by exactly one
| headcount.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-cuts-size-executi...
| freefal67 wrote:
| My cynical interpretation is that the current CEO needed to
| begin taking steps to meet this 2030 goal and determined they
| didn't make financial sense. The 2050 goal is also unrealistic
| but is his successor's problem.
| schiffern wrote:
| Pioneering systems theorist Donella Meadows makes a highly
| salient point. The problem with BP isn't because there are "bad
| people" at the top, and the solution isn't to replace them with
| "good people." The problem is that the decision-makers are
| _constrained to act a certain way_. If they made different
| decisions then.... those people won 't be the decision-makers
| anymore! The same is true for politicians, consumers, etc.
|
| It's a systems problem requiring systems solutions, not a problem
| of (as movies simplistically tell us) "bad people."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg
| fullshark wrote:
| The libertarians constantly spouting that CEOs have a fiduciary
| obligation to shareholders are making the best argument for
| increased government regulation possible.
| jbstack wrote:
| A reasonable libertarian however would require that all
| externalities be paid for (under the principle of doing no
| harm). If the price per unit of oil includes the cost of all
| the negative externalities (e.g. selling that unit comes with
| a requirement to remove the air pollutants and CO2) then it
| isn't really a problem (at least for the purpose of this
| discussion) if CEOs have to seek profit for shareholders.
| imglorp wrote:
| That saying that goes, we are the only species that will become
| extinct because survival wasn't profitable enough.
|
| To the systems point we really, really really, really really
| need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels to 7 trillion a year
| globally. We have to stop making it profitable and encouraged
| by the system.
|
| https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...
| schiffern wrote:
| > we are the only species that will become extinct because
| survival wasn't profitable enough
|
| This a very good quip, but I have to ponder: _how could we
| know that for sure?_
|
| If some other species had a comparable concept used to
| organize themselves, I doubt humans would even be aware of
| that nuance.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Sometimes it's pretty visible. Slime moulds form
| multicellular bodies when food is scarce and they have to
| hunt, and then go back to single-celled life when
| conditions are more favorable.
| saintfire wrote:
| Single celled organisms do it all the time, on a local
| scale.
|
| If you fill a jar with some yeast and sugar water, they'll
| feast and multiply at an accelerating pace until they've
| turned their environment toxic.
|
| Painfully analagous to humans.
| palata wrote:
| Well because other species don't manage to break the
| barriers as efficiently as we do.
|
| The way regulation works is that species are limited by
| their environment. If there are many antelopes, there can
| be many lions. But if there are two many lions, the
| population of antelopes goes down to the point where not
| all the lions can survive, right? This is simplistic, but
| that's the idea (the higher the population, the bigger the
| impact of a disease, etc).
|
| Because we are really good at changing our environment in
| order to be more individuals who consume more resources, we
| escape those regulation mechanisms. By doing this, we
| destroy most species, including ours.
|
| Now let's not pretend that ants would be better: if they
| somehow escaped those mechanisms, they wouldn't suddenly
| vote and stop growing (presumably). The fact is that they
| haven't escaped them, and we have. Well for a while. Now
| it's very likely that _some kind of mechanism_ will end up
| regulating us. Maybe it will finish destroying most
| species, and it will take thousands of years to "recover"
| (with some definition of "recover").
|
| What's interesting with us is that we do know we are
| destroying ourselves and the biodiversity (which is
| arguably one of the enjoyable things in life), but we can't
| seem to find a way to fix it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I feel like we aren't actually unique in this respect, except
| in the sense that we are able to see our own doom but still
| not able to act on it.
|
| In essence, our extinction (if it were to happen) would be
| because we were unable to solve the collective action
| problem... each individual choosing their own best course
| dooms the entire species.
|
| When looked at it this way, lots of species go extinct for
| this reason; resource exhaustion due to uncapped expansion.
|
| The difference is that we don't expect animals to be able to
| reason through the situation and realize that individuals
| would need to sacrifice for the greater good of the species.
| buzzy_hacker wrote:
| > subsidizing fossil fuels to 7 trillion a year globally
|
| This is misleading. See
| https://www.slowboring.com/i/145942190/the-case-of-the-
| myste...
|
| > The vast majority of the "subsidies" are "implicit
| subsidies," which include "undercharging for environmental
| costs." In other words, they are characterizing governments'
| failure to impose a carbon tax as a "subsidy" for fossil fuel
| use.
| gffrd wrote:
| A great point.
|
| What examples do we have of publicly-traded megacorps that have
| successfully made shifts at the scale which we see oil
| companies trying to make? (With extrinsic motivation being a
| primary driver?)
|
| Cigarette companies?
| skybrian wrote:
| The word "required" is not exactly wrong, but not exactly right
| either. Corporate governance is complicated and CEO's have a
| lot of room to maneuver. Some more than others.
|
| Incentives are not destiny, though they are often persuasive.
| Peoples' decisions do matter, which is why there are people in
| the system and it's not just some idiot algorithm.
|
| Also true of consumers and politicians.
| tw04 wrote:
| > as investors focused on near-term returns rather than the
| energy transition.
|
| If the justification for burning the earth to the ground
| continues to be "investors focused on short term returns" then
| governments need to start telling companies like BP they are
| legally and financially responsible for the effects those
| policies have on insurance rates and everything else.
|
| At some point if they can't do the right thing because it's a
| sound long term investment strategy, they need to pay the real
| price of their short term focused strategy.
| cortesoft wrote:
| The way to do this is to price in the effect of the
| transactions on global climate. The reason the market will
| never solve this issue is because the cost is an externality;
| if we made it so every good sold included the cost to offset
| the damage to the environment, the market could address this
| issue.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Govts are in on the spoils of it. There's no reason for govts
| to attain power over people and use it to lose their own power
| by destroying their economy.
| linkjuice4all wrote:
| It's depressing to see companies moving back towards a carbon-
| burning future. It seemed like electric vehicles, battery
| technology, and solar power advancement was finally starting to
| kill the market for ICE engines and 'dirty' thermal power.
|
| Between reversions like this, RTO mandates, and global conflicts
| that seem to include blowing up oil refineries it seems like
| there's absolutely no hope or interest from any major
| governments, businesses, or organizations to do anything to
| address global warming and climate change or even maintain our
| carbon outputs.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Does it not seem like electric vehicles will eventually swallow
| the world? It feels like it's 1900 and you're fighting tooth-
| and-nail to combat horse maltreatment while the rest of the
| world is surging toward a car-laden future. Would it not make
| more sense to simply focus efforts on EV adoption?
| bamboozled wrote:
| I'm not trying to blame this on "Elon" but that guy basically
| kicked off the revolution and is kind of destroying it. His
| cult following, toxic views and enthusiasm for conspiracies
| are starting to make EV ownership something for "weirdos" at
| a time when owning an EV was already contentious. At least in
| the US.
|
| There was a time when I dreamed of owning a Tesla, there is
| absolutely no way I'd drive one now.
|
| I think China is going to steam ahead towards Solar, Nuclear
| and EVs, so maybe there is hope there!
| bamboozled wrote:
| It's not just depressing, it's ruinous. We will be ruined as a
| species from this.
|
| I'm still pressing a head with my personal contribution by
| cladding our new house in panels!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's the standard cycle of progress. "First they ignore you,
| then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win".
| (misattributed to Gandhi).
|
| Moving from one stage to the next is not guaranteed, but EV's,
| battery & solar and definitely well past the first two stages.
| I'd argue that solar might even be in column 4 -- China
| installed 100 GW of it in the first six months of 2024, and the
| rest of the world a similar amount.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Nothing changed. We're literally in an auto market flooded with
| EVs.
|
| If you're a geek, you probably got hyped up by Elon when he was
| saving the world with electric cars. Now that he's regressed to
| his effort to offer himself for impregnation services to
| repopulate and installing fascist dictatorships, the electric
| car stuff has gone by the wayside.
| passwordoops wrote:
| 1-it's not companies, it's nation-states such as China and all
| across the "developing" world making the economic decision to
| use the cheapest, most easily accessible and reliable energy
| source (still fossil). And anyone providing examples of "yes,
| but..." should include an verifiable explanation as to why GHG
| emissions are not only increasing but accelerating
|
| 2- Carbon is much more than energy. Take a look at medicine,
| for example. Remove plastics, the field as we know it stops.
| Stop the flow of primary feedstock from refineries and no more
| medicines. Coal is another excellent example. You can replace
| as many coal plants as you want with renewables, you still need
| it to make the high-grade steel required to manufacture the
| renewables. Which is one reason why China is digging up more
| coal per year than any country ever had since the Industrial
| Revolution.
| kieranmaine wrote:
| A counterpoint to your last sentence:
|
| From "Indonesia's coal producers diversify as money for mining
| dries up" -
| https://www.ft.com/content/9546f590-2fb0-4939-a090-8bac7ba6a...
|
| "In recent years, foreign banks have largely stopped financing
| coal operations, with Indonesian companies primarily securing
| financing from domestic institutions"
| denkmoon wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to
| Hacker News.
| saintfire wrote:
| Crack may have been a poor choice. Many dealers cut crack
| supplies all the time with other drugs, borax, detergents etc.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm rather torn on the discourse on this. I can understand
| disappointment that people are adjusting down on goals. What I
| don't understand is that this seems rather removed from outcome
| measures.
|
| Specifically, in this context, they are still reducing output.
| Just not as aggressively. Do we have reporting on what this means
| in real impact terms? Last reporting I have seen, the majority of
| carbon emissions are from locations that we aren't governing.
| Such that this is akin to yelling at people for not eating all of
| their food, because someone somewhere is starving.
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