BP Quits Oil Lobby Groups Over Climate Policy Differences

BP will leave three U.S. energy trade associations, including the main refining lobby group, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), due to differences over climate policies, the UK-based oil supermajor said on Wednesday.   

BP will be withdrawing its membership from AFPM, the Western Energy Alliance (WEA), and the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), after finding in an in-depth review that those three associations don’t have climate policies aligned to BP’s goals and its support to the Paris Agreement.    

BP has just set an ambitious target to become a net zero company by 2050, but has drawn criticism due to the lack of specifics on how it would achieve this goal.

A week after new CEO Bernard Looney took over from Bob Dudley as BP’s boss, BP unveiled earlier this month a plan to achieve net zero carbon footprint across BP’s operations on an absolute basis by 2050 or sooner. The oil major also aims to halve the carbon intensity of the products it sells by 2050 or sooner, joining other international companies such as Shell and Equinor which also target to reduce the carbon footprint of the energy products they sell.

BP has reviewed the climate policy alignment of 30 key trade associations to which it belongs and will review the policies of the associations in which it continues to be a member in around two years’ time.

“Our priority is to work to influence within trade associations, but we may publicly dissent or resign our membership if there is material misalignment on high-priority issues,” chief executive Looney said in a statement on Wednesday.

BP is not the first European supermajor to quit the main U.S. refining group AFPM. In April last year, Royal Dutch Shell said it would leave the association because of ‘material misalignment’ in climate-related positions, becoming the first major oil and gas group to quit the refining lobby over climate policy disagreements.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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