Daily Mail

BP and Shell plan to hide gases under the ground

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SHELL and BP are among ten of the world’s biggest oil and gas producers to unveil an £800m investment in the fight against climate change.

The new fund will focus on ways to reduce the cost of carbon capture and storage technology, which involves collecting carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel-burning plants and storing them in undergroun­d caverns.

This prevents the harmful gasses from entering the atmosphere and contributi­ng to global warming.

The companies – which make up the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative – have described the move as an ‘unpreceden­ted’ level of collaborat­ion.

But it comes as the oil and gas sector faces mounting pressure to help fight global warming, and the sum is small compared with the £277bn spent globally on clean energy last year.

The £800m is spread over ten years, which if divided equally would see each of the major oil companies pay £8m a year into the fund.

This sum, however, is less than the annual pay of BP chief executive Bob Dudley – who took home £13.8m last year.

But the panel of oil chiefs yesterday said the fund would be in addition to other money they were each investing in climate change and renewables.

It came on the day the Paris Agreement came into force, which marked the first time government­s have agreed legally binding limits to global temperatur­e rises.

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