‘We’re backing Britain,” declared BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, on Tuesday, which was a cuter spin on record quarterly profits of $6.2bn (£5bn) than his boast last November about running “a cash machine”. A debate about windfall taxes has raged ever since last autumn’s remark, which, note, was made when oil prices were $20-a-barrel lower than today’s.
But here’s a key point about BP’s plan to spend “up to” £18bn in the UK by the end of the decade in a programme spanning North Sea oil and gas, offshore wind, hydrogen facilities, electric vehicle charging points and carbon capture projects: it’s not new. The collection of projects is merely a tally of previously announced plans, some of which were backed even when BP’s cashpoint was suffering a relative splutter. The big offshore wind programme in the Irish Sea, for example, was unveiled 15 months ago.
