Five years on from BP’s ambitious pledge, the climate has changed in e

Five years ago, BP’s chief executive did something very unusual for the boss of an oil and gas company – he pledged to produce less oil and gas. 

Standing in front of the slogan “reimagine”, scrawled freehand and lowercase in a shade of green, Bernard Looney, the lean and charismatic then-leader of the British-based oil giant, announced that BP “would become a very different kind of energy company”.

His pitch was striking and very much of the moment.

A multinational that began as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909 would move away from its core products, cutting annual oil production, investing in renewable energy, and even suggested leaving some of its assets in the ground, unexploited.

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The aim, Mr Looney said, was to make BP net-zero by 2050, and to help the world do the same, an aspiration environmental campaigners never dared to imagine they would hear from a fossil fuel giant.

For all the styling, this was not an altruistic move from Mr Looney and the BP board.

With global leaders signed up to cutting carbon emissions and consumers increasingly enthusiastic about the alternatives, they saw money in the pivot to alternative sources.

COVID, only just beginning its circumnavigation of the globe when Mr Looney got to his feet in February 2020, may have reinforced faith in his bet, as skies went quiet and commuters stayed at home.

One fundamental question remained unanswered: Could BP continue to fund the…