BP buys biogas producer Archea for $4.1 billion

The British oil company BP announced this Monday the purchase for 4,100 million dollars of the American producer of “renewable gas” Archaeawith the aim of advancing towards its goal of carbon neutrality in its businesses by 2050.

Archea produce bio gasmainly methane, from waste from landfills or from processing organic matter from livestock or food.

With this operation, BP, which has great liquidity as a result of the spike in oil prices in recent months, expects to “significantly increase its bioenergy activities,” it explained in a statement.

It is counting on this acquisition, which still needs to be approved by regulators and Archea shareholders, to “support (its) progress towards (its) carbon neutrality goal.”

The operation, said Monday the executive director of the British giant, Bernard Looney, will create “a true leader in the biogas sector and would support our ambition of zero emissions.”

Houston-based Archaea produces renewable natural gas equivalent to about 6,000 barrels of oil a day.

BP will pay $3.3 billion in cash plus about $800 million of debt.

BP, listed on the London Stock Exchange, is trying to switch to cleaner fuels to help fight climate change, but the big energy companies are often accused of corporate image washing, especially by environmentalists.

The policy director of Greenpeace in the United Kingdom, Doug Parr, raised this Monday, after the new finance minister Jeremy Hunt reverse the tax cuts, “why not consider a full and proper tax on oil and gas?”

Even Ben van Beurden, outgoing CEO of BP’s oil rival Shell, recently considered that governments should “probably” tax more energy companies to help the most disadvantaged to pay energy bills that do not stop increasing.

But so far, the British prime minister Liz Truss -a former Shell employee- has refused to tax energy companies more.