BP International

BP Internationa

BP is one of the world's largest energy companies, providing its customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light, retail services and petrochemicals products for everyday items.

Facts and figures:

Turnover 1	$284 billion (year 2007)
Replacement cost profit 2	$17.3 billion (year 2007)
Number of employees	97,600 (at Dec 2007)
Number of shareholders	+ 1.2 million (at 31 Dec 2007)
Proved reserves	17.8 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent
Service stations	24,100
Exploration	Active in 29 countries
Refineries	Interest in 17

The BP story, from first oil to tomorrow’s energies
Our history is full of discoveries, starting in 1908 with oil found in a rugged part of Persia after a long and difficult search. Since then, discoveries large and small (and sometimes just in the nick of time) have fuelled our progress.

In our story, you may make a few discoveries of your own. Winston Churchill gives a rousing speech. The Smurfs cause a traffic jam. Our employees help construct a giant spool, build the world’s largest deepwater pipeline and bring solar power to remote villages in the Philippines.

Geographical Action:
The BP group operates across six continents, and our products and services are available in more than 100 countries.

Environmental
United around a vision of environmental leadership and recognition that the challenge to develop cleaner energy must be met, we are committed to the proactive and responsible treatment of our planet's natural resources and to the development of sources of lower carbon energy.

BP believes that biofuels will make a major contribution to global transport energy supply, offering the best options for sustainable lower-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels

Current and future generation biofuels
Biofuels made from crops such as corn, sugar cane, rapeseed and soy are already becoming firmly established in countries such as Brazil and the US. These ’first generation’ biofuels are a good starting point despite concerns about their ability to meet the growing appetite for biofuels, greenhouse gas (GHG) efficiency and their impact on food crops.

They can provide environmental benefits as the carbon dioxide absorbed as crops grow offsets – to varying degrees - the emissions that arise when they are cultivated, processed and burned in engines. However, not all biofuels are equal and some are far better than others.

New generations of biofuels are being explored, using the whole plant in the process, and utilizing feedstocks such as grasses and agricultural wastes. As farming and processing become more efficient, future biofuels should be able to achieve greater reductions in GHG emissions.

Furthermore, advanced biofuels can reduce the need to divert land needed for food crops, especially when they are derived from biomass grown on land unsuitable for food production.

BP and biofuels production
BP is investing in a range of biofuels-related activities, from blending and production to research and sustainability initiatives. By gaining experience in the more sustainable of today’s generation of biofuels – and seeking to produce them as efficiently as possible - we aim to be well positioned to deploy advanced technology options in the future in the most effective ways, environmentally and economically.

We are a major biofuels operator, for example, blending more than 763 million US gallons of ethanol into fuels in the US in 2007.

In 2007, we announced a series of major biofuels projects, including plans for a world-scale bioethanol plant with an expected production capacity of around 420 million litres per year. To be built with our partners, Associated British Foods and DuPont, the $400 million plant will be situated in Hull, UK, and is due to be commissioned in 2010.

We agreed plans with DuPont to construct a demonstration plant that will be used to accelerate the development of biobutanol. Biobutanol can be blended at higher concentrations than bioethanol, potentially supporting further reductions in GHG emissions.

We announced a joint venture with D1 Oils, D1-BP Fuel Crops Limited, which intends to invest $160 million over five years in plantations of jatropha, a drought-resistant, non-edible biodiesel feedstock, which can be grown on a wide variety of land types including marginal and waste land that will not support arable crops. The joint venture will cultivate jatropha in South East Asia, Southern Africa, Central and South America and India and it is anticipated that some one million hectares will be planted over the next four years.

Biofuels research
Recognizing the challenges involved in moving to a new generation of biofuels and the technologies to produce them, we are investing $500 million over 10 years in the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), at which expert biotechnologists are investigating many possible applications of biotechnology to energy, including advanced fuels. We selected as partners for the EBI the University of California, Berkeley, along with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Biofuels sustainability initiatives
BP has engaged with several international organizations that have advocated legislation and drawn up voluntary guidelines to promote responsible biofuels production, avoiding risks such as damage to sensitive ecosystems, for example forests. We sit on the steering board of the Round Table for Sustainable Biofuels and are members of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the Roundtable for Responsible Soy.

As a member of the RSPO, BP has implemented the Roundtable’s sustainability principles for palm oil by applying them to new purchase contracts and requiring independent audits of compliance. We have developed guidelines for the procurement of biodiesel which have been issued for use in the biofuels sourcing business units. BP has also supported legislation to support sustainable biofuels production in the UK, US, Tanzania, Brazil, Mozambique and Zambia, as well as in European consultative processes.

Through our membership of the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, and the Department for Transport's Biofuels Sustainability Advisory Group, we have supported the development of the biofuels GHG and sustainability reporting requirements within the UK Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). This scheme will help to assess and monitor a biofuel's lifecycle GHG-emission footprint, together with its wider environmental and social impacts.

Contact: Ignacio Gavilan, Global Sustainability Strategy Manager
E-mail: Ignacio.gavilan@uk.bp.com