The middle of the Cop26 climate conference was not an ideal moment to demonstrate that producing, refining and trading hydrocarbons remains a spectacularly lucrative business when the stars align. “We’re a cash machine at these types of prices,” declared the BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, cheerfully, referring to oil at $85 a barrel and gas still at multi-year highs.
His description is accurate. The oddity of accounting rules around hedging policies meant BP showed a formal loss in the third quarter of this year, but the surer guide to the current financial bonanza was the underlying profit of $3.3bn (£2.2bn). Remember that BP barely broke even in the equivalent period last year. The vaccine-led recovery in the global economy has
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