BP cuts capital spending plans due to COVID-19

BP has announced that it is to reduce its capital spending plans by 25% – with a new forecast of $12bn – as part of cost reductions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the low oil price. However, it stressed that no BP employees would be laid off during the next three months as a result of the cost-cutting, opting instead to cut output from its US shale oil and gas business.

In recent weeks the company has donated $2mn to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund to support the work of the World Health Organization (WHO) leading and coordinating the international pandemic response.

In the UK, BP is allowing emergency service vehicles to refuel for free at its nationwide network of forecourts and it is also supplying free fuel to air ambulances. The company is also supporting similar efforts in Spain, Turkey, Poland, and Australia. It is supplying fuel cards to healthcare workers in Germany.

Other action taken, includes using BP’s own stocks and supply chain to donate personal protective equipment (PPE) to health services in the US, UK, France, Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands and Germany. While in Brazil, its biofuels joint venture is diverting some of its sugarcane ethanol production to make a disinfectant product and supplying it to local health services that serve a population of 1.4mn.