Some twenty years ago, BP tried to rebrand itself as “Beyond Petroleum” with an inane virtue-signaling pledge to stop producing fossil fuels. The company became the subject of ridicule. It would be like Heinz pledging not to make ketchup.

The pledge was to swear off its own product (instead of defending itself from extreme environmentalists) by holding carbon emissions constant, and instead investing in a portfolio of wind and solar farms.

But the world isn’t retreating from oil and gas –– it’s using more of it than ever before. (As regular HOTLINE readers know, the so-called Great Energy Transition is a media-driven fiction.)

So BP is expected to announce as early as this week that it will scale back its pledge to cut hydrocarbon production a full 40% by 2030. The company is calling this shift a way to “pragmatically adapt” to the world’s surging energy demands.