BP (British Petroleum)

Reasons to avoid

1. On April 20, 2010, an explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig killed 11 workers and triggered the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history, releasing 134 million gallons of oil over 87 days and fouling the coastlines of five states. BP pleaded guilty to 14 felony counts in 2012 and ultimately paid more than $65 billion in total costs, including a $20.8 billion civil settlement that remains the largest environmental damage settlement in U.S. history.noaa.gov2016-04-04
2. After pledging in 2020 to cut oil and gas production by 40% by 2030, BP reduced that target to 25% in 2023 and then scrapped the production-cut goal entirely in February 2025, instead announcing plans to grow oil output to levels above what the company was already pumping. The reversal came as BP reported record profits from fossil fuels, with the company prioritizing shareholder returns over the climate commitments it had publicly championed for five years.aljazeera.com2025-02-26
3. In December 2019, environmental lawyers at ClientEarth filed an official complaint with the OECD alleging that BP's multimillion-pound "Keep Advancing" and "Possibilities Everywhere" campaigns misled the public by presenting BP as racing toward renewables, when over 96% of the company's annual capital spending went to oil and gas. BP withdrew the entire campaign within two months of the complaint, with the UK's OECD contact point ruling the complaint was material and substantiated.clientearth.org2019-12-04
4. In September 2022, an explosion at BP's Ohio refinery killed brothers Ben Morrissey, 32, and Max Morrissey, 34, after a flammable vapor cloud ignited while workers attempted to correct rising liquid levels in a fuel gas drum. Federal investigators cited BP for 10 serious safety violations, including failing to train workers to identify flammable naphtha during an upset condition and failing to execute an emergency shutdown when operators requested one.dol.gov2023-03-16
5. BP has remained a member of the American Petroleum Institute despite the trade group's decades-long history of opposing carbon taxes, renewable energy standards, and vehicle emissions regulations, and BP indicated in its own disclosures that the API receives the single largest portion of its annual industry association dues. A 2024 OpenSecrets investigation documented how the API has spent between $4 and $9 million on federal lobbying annually while systematically recycling the same anti-climate-policy arguments since 1967.opensecrets.org2024-07-11