When BP appointed Bernard Looney as CEO exactly three years ago, climate activists believed they might finally have an ally within Big Oil, after decades of deep distrust of the energy industry. Looney—Irish, from a poor farming family—broke the mold of Britain’s century-old company in more ways than one: He vowed to turn BP into a green energy giant, by drastically cutting oil and gas production and plowing billions into renewables. “This is the first oil major to walk the walk,” Mark van Baal, founder of the Amsterdam-based shareholder activist organization Follow This, told Fortune at the time. “If one oil major breaks ranks, and shareholders reward them for it, others will follow.”
That optimism shattered on Tuesday, when BP became the latest oil supermajor to report record-high profits for 2022—while announcing, at the same time, a sharp rollback of its climate targets.
