Latest news with #BP

BP continuing quality assessment of BTC oil while loadings continue

Reuters

3 hours ago

Business
Reuters

BP continuing quality assessment of BTC oil while loadings continue

MOSCOW, July 30 (Reuters) - BP (BP.L), opens new tab, the operator of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, said on Wednesday it was continuing its extensive quality assessment of Azeri BTC oil by taking samples before each loading at the terminal. Organic chloride contamination in Azeri BTC crude cargoes was discovered last week, sending price differentials to a four-year low and causing several days' delay in loadings from Turkey's BTC Ceyhan terminal. Delays have been caused in part by the additional testing, sources told Reuters. After enough oil to form a cargo arrives in the shore tank at the BTC Ceyhan terminal, it is tested and the results are shown to the charterers of vessels waiting to load at the port for approval or rejection, a port agent explained on Wednesday. It remains unclear how many Azeri crude cargoes in total have been affected by organic chloride contamination. So far, Austria's OMV and Italy's Eni have confirmed cargoes they had purchased were contaminated. BP also said that it was working closely with Azerbaijan's Socar to manage the off-spec crude in storage at the terminal, while export operations are continuing. A total of six cargoes of Azeri crude have loaded since the organic chloride contamination was first reported on July 22, according to data from analytics firm Kpler.

Activists are right to target Edinburgh Festival sponsorship

The Herald Scotland

4 hours ago

Politics
The Herald Scotland

Activists are right to target Edinburgh Festival sponsorship

There's a lot there I disagree with, but there's one point on which I find myself in accord with Ms McDermid. 'There is no such thing as a clean sponsor,' she says. 'If you dig deep, everybody who sponsors an arts event has got something in the cupboard that you would be uncomfortable with.' Read more Which surely cuts to the very heart of the matter and, I believe, undercuts Ms McDermid's argument. Because if there are no clean sponsors in the world of arts funding then surely you have a prima facie case proving that none of them – not 'unfairly pilloried' Baillie Gifford, not BP, not the Sackler family nor any of those other deep-pocketed corporate backers of the arts – was ever in it for reasons of genuine altruism but instead for reasons of cynicism and opportunism. To hedge against reputational damage. To indulge in what these days we call art-washing. Or, in the words of Chris Garrard, director of the campaign group Culture Unstained, to 'attempt to access high-level decision makers, to secure the public backing of leading cultural figures and to craft a positive public image.' Of course nobody wants to be in a position where all arts are state-funded (dream on, anyway: given the state of the nation's finances it's an entirely theoretical position). But just because there are no clean current sponsors of the arts does not mean there is no potential for them, no clean companies or wealthy individuals willing to front up cash in return for something as relatively benign as publicity or recognition. You just have to find them. Arts sponsorship is transactional, but nobody is asking you to sell your soul at the crossroads. All they do ask is for due diligence to be applied at the outset and, as societal attitudes shift and geo-politics intrude, for a little common sense to be brought to bear. As an author, Ms McDermid engages with and explores moral complexity because that's what good authors do. Things aren't black and white, she is saying, so underpinning her comments is an associated belief in nuance. Back in August 2023, the bone of contention centred mainly on Baillie Gifford's involvement in the fossil fuel industry and the wider impact on the ongoing climate emergency. People applied nuance to that and often concluded things weren't as simple as they looked to the protestors. A Palestinian woman mourns as she embraces the body of her daughter who was killed in an Israeli army strike on Gaza. at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in June. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi) (Image: Jehad Alshrafi) But since then the issue of Gaza and Palestine, and of Israeli's response to the Hamas attacks of October 2023, has joined the climate emergency at the battlefront and become an area of great concern for many who work in the cultural sector. And just as nature abhors a vacuum, so do many in 2025 now naturally abjure nuance as a result. Why? Because nuance cannot be found in images of emaciated Palestinian children being starved of food. Because it's likewise hard to catch as you view satellite images of the post-apocalyptic wasteland Israeli bombers and American-made bombs have left behind in Gaza. Because today the climate emergency increasingly must be seen in terms of black and white. How else can activists and protestors critique the woolly 'adaptation' and 'resilience' mantras peddled by do-little (or do-nothing) governments? How else can they attack the actions of the rent-seeking corporates who still seek mid-term advantage in fossil fuels or, yes, the private equity firms which take short-term advantage from the same and return sizeable profits to their clients? Nuance be damned, I say, and I congratulate those artists, musicians, writers and other performers who say: enough is enough. Who say: sorry, not coming this year. Who blow the whistle and yell: everybody out. Ironically, this is also the week in which even the University of Edinburgh – let's have that again for emphasis: even the University of Edinburgh – has announced that among other acts of reparation it will investigate divesting from companies which may contribute to human rights violations in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. The UN has found the university to be one of the UK's most 'financially entangled institutions' in that regard, with over £25 million invested in four companies central to Israel's 'surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction.' The 200 or so pro-Palestine protestors who disrupted 24 graduation ceremonies this summer will be applauding. Less so those who criticised and derided those same students for their actions. Read more Moving on, the Baillie Gifford case appears settled. But as the digital archaeologists, hacktivists and activists sift through social media posts, company accounts and financial documents, there are many sets of cross-hairs alighting on many more targets and the effects could be felt among the UK's arts organisations and arts bodies. Watch out for mention of Sequoia Capital in the months ahead. They recently invested $100 million in UK-based art-house movie streaming platform and film distributor MUBI, but they also have investments in Israeli defence-tech start-up Kela which is developing AI-enhanced battlefield systems. Last week, Chile's Valdivia Film Festival announced it was refusing to show films managed by MUBI as a consequence. Will there be more such actions? It doesn't seem unlikely. And while you may never have heard of US-based private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) or even of Superstruct Entertainment, the company it bought in 2020, you will have heard of some of the 80 music festivals Superstruct Entertainment owns. Among them are UK festivals Field Day and The Mighty Hoopla, live streaming platform Boiler Room, and Barcelona's massive and massively prestigious electronic music festival, Sónar. Not so big this year, though: 70 acts pulled out of the June event in protest at KKR's Israeli military contracts and its links to manufacturers of weapons and surveillance technology. I look at all this and I don't see virtual signalling or hypocrisy or bandwagon jumping. I see artists doing what they should be doing and what our politicians are not: displaying moral courage, often in the face of criticism and (just as often) their own financial self-interest. Will it affect anything? Maybe not. But change starts with uncomfortable questions being asked, and for that you need 360 degree scrutiny. If action follows, so be it. Barry Didcock is a Herald arts writer

Hindustan Times

6 hours ago

Business
Hindustan Times

The remarkable rise of 'greenhushing'

Read the headlines and the easy conclusion is that big business has abandoned the fight against climate change. In the past two weeks BP, an oil giant, sold its American onshore-wind business; Jaguar Land Rover, a carmaker, has reportedly delayed the launch of its new electric Range Rover; and HSBC, a bank, left the Net-Zero Banking Alliance (nzba), a group committed to lending in a greener way. But these bits of news are only part of the picture. Taken as a whole, companies are quietly making progress on their climate goals. Consider a report published in March by PWC, an auditor. It found that of the 4,000-odd firms that reported climate commitments last year to the CDP, a non-profit, only 16% dialled back their goals, while 47% stood by them and 37% became more ambitious. The analysis also found that 67% of companies with targets were on track to meet them, a proportion which had inched up by three percentage points compared with 2023. Once firms were accused of 'greenwashing': making nonsense promises, and doing nothing to achieve them. Now they seem to be 'greenhushing'—getting on with the job of decarbonisation, without making a fuss. Firms are also improving the rigour of their targets. Some are moving away from using ineffective carbon offsets to claim carbon neutrality, says Thomas Day of the NewClimate Institute, a think-tank. That includes Microsoft, Google and easyJet. Our analysis of data from the Science Based Targets initiative (sbti), a non-profit that verifies climate goals, shows that the share of firms that target 'scope three' emissions (a category which includes pollution created in their supply chain and from the use of their products) in their goals rose from 28% in 2022 to 67% in 2024. This is welcome news because when businesses set green goals, decarbonisation tends to follow. MSCI, a provider of stockmarket indices, looked at the 2,400 or so large and medium-sized companies in their global index. In the past three years those with a climate target saw a 8% drop in their emissions intensity (defined as emissions from a firm's operations and from purchased energy per dollar of revenue). That figure declined by only 3% for those without a target. Even if this is promising, plenty of problems remain. One is that the sectors where there is backsliding are particularly crucial to slowing climate change. That includes the oil-and-gas industry, which is struggling to find a way to decarbonise profitably. Murray Auchincloss, bp's boss, announced a shift away from renewable energy and back to fossil fuels in a 'fundamental reset' earlier this year. On July 22nd news broke that Shell, Enbridge and Aker bp, three oil companies, quit the sbti's advisory group set up to define what 'net zero' means for oil companies. They reportedly left because they were told achieving it would mean not developing new oil and gas fields. Financial institutions are also backsliding. Along with hsbc, big American banks including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have dropped out of the nzba, as have some from Japan and Canada. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a think-tank, estimates that the leavers account for two-fifths of the group's total assets. The same problems are afflicting similar organisations, such as the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative. Last year Wells Fargo, another bank, scrapped its green-lending plans and in March Switzerland's ubs pushed back its climate targets after acquiring Credit Suisse. Part of the problem for financial institutions is politics, which was shifting even before Donald Trump returned to the White House. In America Republican senators have suggested that joining a green alliance could breach antitrust rules. Since Mr Trump's re-election the pressure has been cranked up. In January ten attorneys-general wrote to America's biggest financial firms, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, threatening legal action if the companies did not change their climate and diversity policies. As a consequence, even companies that have continued to take action to decarbonise have grown more reluctant to parade their efforts. The number of times climate change is mentioned on earnings calls of companies in the s&p 500 or stoxx Europe 600 indices has dropped from 427 in the first quarter of 2022 to 246 in the first three months of this year. If they can no longer boast about their targets, then some firms might start to question whether setting them is worthwhile. Already companies that hoped their green credentials would give them a share-price boost as money flooded into sustainable-investment funds have been disappointed. Yet the fact that many are quietly persevering with decarbonisation points to a more comforting conclusion: that they realise that taking action is beneficial to their bottom lines, no matter what politicians say or do. If the worst accusation that environmentalists can level at a company is its tendency to greenhush, then that is surely a sign of progress. To stay on top of the biggest stories in business and technology, sign up to the Bottom Line, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.

New report reveals widespread trend of corporations falling short of crucial goals: 'It's not working out yet'

Yahoo

a day ago

Business
Yahoo

New report reveals widespread trend of corporations falling short of crucial goals: 'It's not working out yet'

New report reveals widespread trend of corporations falling short of crucial goals: 'It's not working out yet' A report by Bloomberg has highlighted a trend of large corporations falling short of their sustainability commitments. What's happening? Voluntary action, Bloomberg explains, is making environmental responsibility optional while the planet continues to overheat. Peter Ford, former program lead of H&M Group's Sustainability and Energy Efficiency, shared his disappointment with the fashion industry's lack of progress in curbing pollution and waste. "As an industry, it's not working out yet," Ford said, per Bloomberg. Even with H&M's recent report of a 24% reduction in supply chain pollution, apparel pollution is projected to rise an additional 30% by the end of the decade, according to McKinsey & Co. According to the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), a corporate climate action organization that holds companies accountable in combating the climate crisis, almost 11,000 companies have announced sustainability commitments or set "science-based targets" — targets aligned with what climate science deems necessary to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. The SBTi target dashboard tracks companies that have made climate pledges, as well as companies that have removed their commitments. According to the dashboard, more than 800 companies have since removed their commitments — Walmart being one of them. Earlier this year, Walmart announced its slow progress on reducing the company's pollution, admitting it was falling behind on its climate goals. Around the same time, oil and gas giant BP announced a plan to scrap renewable energy commitments, deciding to focus on dirty fuels instead. On the banking side, HSBC has been facing major backlash for going back on a promise to divest from oil and gas fields. It also raised over $1 million in funding for Glencore, a major coal producer. Voluntary action on environmental goals has made it easy for companies to backslide on sustainability pledges. As more companies drop out, others could be inclined to do the same. Why are climate goals important? A recent report by Sustainable Fitch found that 88% of the world's largest corporations and financial institutions either kept or expanded their climate pledges. However, that also means that 12% of companies, including the likes of Walmart, BP, and HSBC, lowered or dropped their commitments. Do you think America does a good job of protecting its natural beauty? Definitely Only in some areas No way I'm not sure Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Among the many changes that the Trump administration has implemented are renouncements of climate programs and policies that worked toward reaching climate goals to help curb the planet's overheating. However, without the support of the government, climate responsibility becomes even more of a choice for large corporations that had previously pledged to do better. Meanwhile, the planet is rapidly overheating due to human-induced pollution of heat-trapping gases from burning dirty fossil fuels for energy. Rising global temperatures, linked to increased extreme weather events, have dire consequences for all life on Earth. What can I do to help? Forming a unified front in the fight against rising global temperatures and changing climates is key to achieving effective progress. However, change can also happen on an individual level. Being part of the solution requires first learning about critical climate issues and understanding how different aspects of your lifestyle may be contributing to the larger problem. Simple switches you can make to lower your carbon footprint include walking or biking instead of driving, or driving an electric vehicle instead of a gas-powered car. Shopping secondhand instead of buying things new and supporting brands that align with environmental values are other ways to help. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet. Solve the daily Crossword

RIL sets up JV with ONGC, BP for exploration off western coast

The Hindu