BP chief says better ways to preserve jobs than by supporting coal industry

The chief executive of oil giant BP said Tuesday that Congress needs to find a better way of maintaining jobs than “preserving them in the coal industry.”

Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive officer since 2007, said in a speech on energy security and climate change at the Peterson Institute for International Economics that it was “somewhat surprising” coal plants were being built in the United States given concerns about climate change.

Hayward said Congress instead should be promoting natural gas, which emits as few as half the carbon emissions that coal does. He said the effort in the Senate to write a new climate legislation appeared to be more equitable to the natural gas industry than the bill the House passed last June. BP has significant natural gas resources, and would likely stand to benefit from climate legislation that encouraged more gas use. Natural gas makes up more than half of BP’s total energy production, according to the company’s Web site.

Lisa Camooso Miller, a spokeswoman for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a group that includes coal producers and users, said Hayward’s comments were “no surprise” given the importance of natural gas to BP’s business.

She said coal is three times less expensive than natural gas and was an abundant and “increasingly clean” resource that should continue to be the mainstay source of electricity generation.

Coal now accounts for around 50 percent of the power generated in the United States, but is responsible for about one-third of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Echoing a complaint common in the natural gas industry, Hayward said the coal industry was “disproportionately favored” in the House climate legislation. But he said he was encouraged by the direction of climate talks in the Senate.

BP recently dropped out of the United States Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies and environmental groups that developed a framework the House climate legislation built upon.

Despite that decision, Hayward says his company continues to support a “cap and trade” legislation as the best way to lower carbon dioxide emissions and also spur investments in cleaner sources of power.

Hayward indicated he was encouraged by the effort by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) to write compromise climate legislation.