Oil giants prepare to release results

Britain’s two biggest oil companies are set to update shareholders this week amid a low oil price and a race to reduce emissions.

In v e s t o r s will be leafing through BP’s results tomorrow, while Shell will present how its third quarter went two days later.

Shares in both have cratered during 2020, as oil prices fell to record lows at the beginning of the pandemic.

At one point sellers were paying buyers as much as $37.63 to take a barrel of West Texas Intermediate oil off their hands, amid fears that storage space would run out for the crude in April.

Brent crude, the standard that is more commonly used in Britain, never turned negative but dropped to below 19 dollars per barrel.

Months later, both Shell and BP wrote off billions of dollars worth of assets after reducing the book value of the oil they still have in the ground.

“The focus (for BP) is now on getting the most out of its remaining oil fields while investing in a low-carbon future, and given the rather precarious state of the balance sheet, it’s a very tricky manoeuvre to pull off,” said Susannah S t r e e t e r, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Chief executive Bernard Looney set out his views on climate change as he took the reins in Fe b r u a r y, promising to make the company net-zero by mid-century.

He fleshed out his ideas in August when the company presented its most recent set of financial results and cut its dividend for the first time in a decade.

The company will cut its oil and gas production by 40% before 2030, and invest $5 billion a year in lowcarbon projects as it tries to reposition from a dirty fuel company.