Methane and CCS necessary for climate goals: former BP CEO

The goals outlined in the Paris climate accord cannot be reached without using methane as an alternative to coal, former BP CEO Bob Dudley said June 24.

Dudley is now the chairman of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), an industry-led group aligned with the benchmarks set in the Paris climate agreement. Speaking on the energy transition with Daniel Yergin, the vice chairman of IHS Markit, Dudley said methane alongside carbon capture and storage (CCS) are necessary for a cleaner future.

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“You can’t get to those goals without both of those,” he said from Washington DC.

Methane can be consumed as it is or steam reformed to produce blue hydrogen, with CO₂ emissions from the process captured and stored.

“You almost can’t get to the aims of the Paris Accords without the use of methane to displace coal out of the power system,” Dudley said.

Dudley’s posture at the OGCI is a stark reversal from his tenure at BP. At the helm in 2018, Dudley avoided making any funding pledges to invest directly in CCS, where CO₂ is stored typically underground as an abatement scheme.

OGCI in 2016 set up a $1bn fund, backed nonetheless by BP and ten other majors, for climate action projects, including CCS.