BP will invest $5 billion in an oil project in the US. It expects demand growth before the end of the decade

British oil company BP will invest $5 billion in a new project in the Gulf of Mexico, betting on the growth of oil production in the United States. Last week, the company published a revised forecast on global demand: now it hopes that oil consumption will grow until at least 2030.

BP on Sept. 29 announced a decision to expand its $5 billion offshore oil and gas project in the Gulf of Mexico. The project, called Tiber-Guadalupe, will be the next step in the company's strategy to return to its core oil and gas business, Reuters writes.

Work at the field is planned to start in 2030. The project will include construction of a new floating platform with a capacity of up to 80,000 barrels of oil per day.

The company's shares were down 0.8% in London trading on Monday, but they added about 12.5% relative to the beginning of 2025. BP's securities were cheaper by 0.25% on the premarket in New York.

In recent years, BP has performed worse than competitors, including Shell and Exxon Mobil, amid a growing debt load, Reuters notes. To remedy the situation, in February the company announced plans to cut investments in renewable energy and increase oil and gas production to revitalize the business and regain investor confidence.

The US will be a key field for this strategy, with BP aiming to increase its production in the Gulf of Mexico to at least 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030, up from 341,000 barrels last year, according to a company statement. It also aims to increase its combined offshore and onshore production in the U.S. to more than 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day by 2030.

The new platform will develop the Tiber and Guadalupe fields, located about 480 km southwest of New Orleans. The company estimates their recoverable reserves at about 350 million barrels of oil equivalent.

Tiber-Guadalupe will be BP's second project in the Gulf of Mexico to use ultra-high pressure production at 20,000 pounds per square inch, a major technological breakthrough, Reuters noted. The first company to drill at such pressures was U.S. Chevron at its Anchor project last year.

Last week, BP unveiled two energy scenarios through 2050 in its latest Energy Outlook 2025. The company said that global oil demand will grow until at least 2030 - five years longer than the company had forecast a year earlier. The reason was the slow pace of energy efficiency improvements and emissions reductions.

In the "Current Trajectory" baseline scenario, global oil demand is maintained at around 100 mb/d in the coming years, returns to about the same level by 2035, and then declines to less than 85 mb/d by 2050. If energy efficiency growth is weaker than projected, global oil demand could increase to nearly 106 mb/d by 2035.

In the "Below 2 degrees" scenario, consistent with the Paris climate agreement targets, demand peaks in 2025 (about 102 million bpd), after which it begins to fall sharply, to just over 85 million by 2035 and to less than 35 million by 2050. This scenario assumes a reduction in emissions of about 90% relative to 2023 levels. Combustion of oil, natural gas and coal would remain the main source of emissions.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor