Why BP and the other oil giants must defy Labour’s green madness – and give Britain the power it needs

Britain’s climate change activists may think they have gained the upper hand in the fight against fossil fuels.

But the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have underlined the importance of energy security for all our lives.

BP, which yesterday posted its lowest quarterly profit in almost four years due to lower oil prices, is a company at the center of the conflict.

Under the previous boss, Bernard Looney, the course was firmly away from fossil fuels with ambitious targets to reduce oil and gas production.

But his replacement, Murray Auchincloss, is under pressure to think again. His decisions have huge consequences for BP shareholders and for UK plc.

BP is showing signs of taking on green campaigners and politicians such as Energy Minister Ed Miliband, whose obsession with banning fossil fuels is doing great damage to this country.

The oil giant is also confronting the lobbyists and fanatics who shame and vilify British institutions based on their links to energy companies.

In December last year, to the fury of eco-warriors, it signed a £50 million sponsorship deal with the British Museum.

This is despite the fact that just months earlier it was revealed that BP had been forced to stop supporting the museum after 27 years.

This followed a brutal demonstration campaign by the green lobby against the leading energy company.

What’s striking is that the British Museum seems to have had a change of heart in welcoming back its old sponsor.

All is well with Wokery – until it costs you tens of millions of pounds in support.

Eco-campaigners have forced many cultural organizations to cut ties with their fossil fuel sponsors.

The Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Scottish Ballet and the Royal Opera House have all ended their decades-long funding partnerships with BP in recent years after buckling under pressure.

The National Gallery parted ways with rival oil giant Shell, as did London-based arts complex Southbank Center and the British Film Institute.

In the city, the oil giants are also shunned, with some asset managers excluding them from our pension funds. This is despite the fact that they are among the largest payers of UK dividends to investors and taxes to HMRC.

But the mood finally changes. And it is the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict in the Middle East that have helped catalyze this change.

They have forced the West to recognize how fragile our energy supply is, and that there is no prospect of renewables replacing it in the near future.

And so energy companies like BP all over the world are going back to basics.

Except in British coastal waters. They are still rich in oil and gas, but the Labor government’s flat refusal to grant new North Sea oil licenses means the wealth of opportunities they offer is shrouded in darkness.

Miliband has slammed the door on new oil exploration in the North Sea. New drilling has been jettisoned for a green agenda for wind and solar energy, which will never meet our energy needs and will damage the landscape.

Proposed new taxes on existing North Sea oil fields are a blow to Britain’s refining and engineering skills. In the worst case, the industry estimates that up to 100,000 jobs could be at risk.

Labour’s claim that the launch of state-owned Great British Energy can fill the void, with new manufacturing jobs in the renewable energy sector, is fantasy.

Denmark is the world leader in the procurement and production of wind farm technology. The panels for solar parks and our homes are largely made cheaply in China. The heat pumps that Labor wants us to buy to replace gas boilers are mainly imported from Germany.

The damage caused by Labour’s green zeal has become clear even in the short time that Labor has been in power.

Thousands of job losses have been announced following the closure of coal-fired steel blast furnaces in Port Talbot.

A new, greener electric arc furnace will not be operational for several years. Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos company has now decided that oil refining at Grangemouth is no longer economical. The list goes on.

The madness of Labour’s approach is that it is so short-sighted. The big oil companies are eager to get behind the renewable energy revolution.

However, the best way to do this is to maximize revenues now so they can invest more in green energy development for the future.

Under Looney, the energy giant set itself the ambition to be a greener company by 2030, which involved sacrificing profits and dividends.

After leaving a year ago, his successor, Canadian-born Auchincloss, returned to exploration and production.

And predictably, given the hopeless prospects for fossil fuel development in Britain, we are looking elsewhere.

There are three new projects in Iraq, new plans in Kuwait and a return to the Gulf of Mexico – scene of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010 – where the company will develop a large and complex oil reservoir.

Onshore in the US, it is expanding in Texas’ Permian Basin, where fracking has transformed America’s energy prospects, making the country the world’s largest natural gas exporter.

BP is far from alone in recognizing that the route to a greener energy future involves doubling oil and gas drilling and building large strategic reserves.

Cash flows from oil, if used wisely, can support the renewable energy revolution.

No one frowns upon Norway’s continued pumping of oil and gas, and the country is one of our largest energy suppliers through the Langeled pipeline.

Norway, already one of Britain’s biggest foreign investors, recently announced that its state-controlled oil and gas company Equinor has bought a 10 percent stake in the huge Danish energy company Orsted.

Equinor operates huge offshore wind farms off the east coast of England and was recently a winner in the latest UK licensing round.

There could be no better example of how fossil fuel companies are creating the financial resources that, over time, will enable the green energy revolution.

In the United States, the presence of climate change experts on Exxon-Mobil’s board has not caused the company to double its oil exposure.

Earlier this year it spent £46 billion buying Pioneer Oil in Texas, one of America’s biggest beneficiaries of the fracking revolution.

Also in the US, Warren Buffett, the world’s most famous investor, showed no restraint in acquiring a major stake in Western oil.

Even the woke campuses are changing their minds.

Princeton University in New Jersey just reversed a policy that restricted funding for academic research by fossil fuel companies, saying the rule hampered research into environmental challenges.

The fact is that this Labor government appears increasingly out of step with the world on fossil fuels.

And the dangers of making Big Oil unwelcome here are clear.

Wael Sawan, the CEO of British-Dutch giant Shell, has warned that Britain’s hostility to oil exploration has led him to consider moving the company’s share listing from London to New York.

As one of the two largest companies in Britain, Shell’s departure would be an unmitigated disaster for the City of London and the country’s tax base.

In 2023, it contributed £51 billion to governments around the world – including much in Britain – in the form of corporate taxes, royalties, excise duties and other levies. That’s more than double Labour’s so-called black hole of £22 billion.

Last month it was revealed that more than 50% of the UK’s energy now comes from renewable sources.

The path to a future with lower CO2 emissions is being mapped out. But there is no point in demonizing our big oil companies with windfall taxes and other taxes and driving them offshore.

It undermines the country’s security (making us dependent on imports from abroad) and could deprive Britain of the dividends and profits that could contribute to a less disruptive transition.