Tomorrow British oil and gas company BP is releasing its 2010 capital expenditure program. Expect company Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward to reaffirm his company’s focus on its oil and gas business.
Last quarter BP posted a fourth-quarter profit of $4.3 billion after losing $3.34 billion in the prior-year period. For the year, BP earned $16.58 billion. Most of that revenue was generated by the company’s upstream and downstream oil and gas business.
On clean energy, a sector BP until a few years actively anchored its marketing outreach, Hayward will likely announced continued investments in biofuel businesses in Latin America and in its recently acquired carbon capture and storage project in the United Arab Emirates. Don’t expect new investments in wind outside the U.S.
In Washington as the White House works to revive its healthcare overhaul, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) is trying to do the same with his climate change bill. Kerry is working in a tri-partisan coalition, comprised of Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-S.C.), and Sen. Joseph Lieberman, (I-Conn.), to try to find a bill that can attract sixty votes.
On the Kerry bill expect supporters to point out that the alternative is an unattractive, rigid, EPA-led regulatory regime. The opposition will likely make light on a series of stumble by the climate change scientific community, including most recently criticism on the on the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) own scientific conclusion on human-made climate change.