By Barney Smith BP’s AGM this year is on 12 May only a couple of days before the Shell AGM , so comparisons are inevitable. But they are also perhaps instructive. The Shell document (See Greenbarrel of 28 April) looks too similar to those produced by the company in recent years. But the BP Annual [...]
By Barney Smith Shell’s AGM this year is on 18 May. The” Powering Progress” document distributed to shareholders contains the following two key passages on page 19: “Achieving net-zero emissions: Tackling climate change is an urgent challenge. That is why we have set a target to become a net-zero emissions energy business by 2050, in [...]
By Barney Smith In October and November 2020 Greenbarrel duly recorded the opening salvoes in the fight between Veolia and Suez, the world’s two largest environmental services companies (both French). The battle was joined in the summer of 2020 after Veolia purchased 29.9 per cent of Suez from another French company, Engie, which decided to [...]
By Barney Smith Thursday 25 March 2021 saw the release of the sixteenth annual report by the Global World Energy Council (GWEC) . The title “Wind Energy’s role on the road to Net Zero” shows that Climate Change is back on the agenda, and the report also notes the trend for countries to announce net [...]
By Barney Smith Big Oil is under unprecedented pressure. Accelerating global action on climate change is forcing powerful companies to move into new and unfamiliar energy markets. In addition, the Covid pandemic has hammered oil prices and catalysed the move towards renewable energy in many parts of the world. Greenbarrel has outlined the rather different [...]
By Barney Smith For BP, as for Shell, the objective is to gradually move to become a different sort of energy company while preserving the more immediate returns from oil and gas which will still be needed by consumers for years, if not decades, to come. But BP, unlike Shell, has so far received a [...]
By Barney Smith Last year was a tough year for all oil companies as is testified by the rash of results just issued. Shell, BP (and Exxon Mobil) have each admitted losses of around US$20 billion, caused directly, or indirectly, by Covid and the collapse of the oil price. They all know that the good [...]
By Barney Smith The bottled water industry is relatively new and has “Come from nowhere”. Who would have thought that we could be made to pay for bottles containing what used to be free from the tap? Yet some simple statistics would suggest that the sale of bottled water became big business. Apparently, in 2017 [...]
By Barney Smith Following the thoughts on Oil and Gas in Greenbarrel of 19 January 2021, it is now clear how crucial future governmental policy on Buildings will be. As the beginning of Chapter 4 of the Energy White Paper (WP) makes it explicit that for the UK to reach the net-zero target by 2050 [...]
By Barney Smith On second thoughts, it seemed only sensible for Greenbarrel to devote a bit more coverage to Oil and Gas in the context of the Energy White Paper, as a whole chapter (one of six) was devoted to this subject by the Government. Furthermore, Greenbarrel has already commented on the so-far somewhat limited [...]