BP PLC is one of the companies with the largest responsibility for burning unwanted natural gas in the busiest US oilfield. Now it’s tidying up its act.
The British oil giant plans to spend about $ 1.3 billion to build a massive network of pipes and other infrastructure to capture natural gas produced as a by-product from oil wells in the Permian basin of Texas and New Mexico and to catch. It plans to announce on Monday that it will eliminate the routine burning of natural gas in the oil field by 2025.
BP’s investment reflects the increasing pressure that large oil companies are experiencing among regulators, investors and buyers of natural gas to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuels and contribute to climate change.
BP has promised to reinvent itself as a cleaner energy company, saying it will drop oil and gas fuel production by 40% by 2030 and eventually sell more renewable energy than oil, while reducing net carbon emissions to zero reduce. But to fund its ambitious transformation, BP is counting on continued revenues from oil and gas production.
“We’ll be producing oil and gas for decades, but it’s going to be a certain kind of oil and gas,” said Dave Lawler, chairman of BP America Inc. “It’s a very profitable barrel and it’s a barrel being manufactured. “