A decade after BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, CEO Bernard Looney is vowing a steep drop in oil and gas drilling and a halt to exploration in new areas, and he wants to zero out the company’s mammoth carbon emissions by 2050. His announcement in February 2020 had other oil majors racing to match those targets. All are mindful that consumers and shareholders, not to mention their own employees, can no longer abide business as usual. And though the pandemic pummeled BP’s revenues and left the oil industry reeling, Looney says he will not back down from his mission. “This direction is unstoppable now,” he says. “Without action it is a rather bleak future for the world.”
Correction, April 28
A photo caption in the original version of this story misstated the company behind the Impact Solar project in Lamar County, Texas. Lightsource bp—which is partially owned by BP—is behind the project, not BP itself.
