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# Long read: How the Foreign Office is working hard to help Shell and BP
- URL: https://abolishwestminster.com/long-read-how-the-foreign-office-is-working-hard-to-help-shell-and-bp/
- Published: 2026-10-12T00:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-19T06:08:39.000Z
- Author: Adam Ramsay
- Tags: climate, FCDO, fossil fuels

The UK government’s refusal to grant new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea has been controversial of late. But, for anyone familiar with climate science, it should be a no-brainer. There is more than enough carbon in the existing reserves already owned by the world’s fossil fuel companies to guarantee dangerous global heating. Opening up new reserves would be an epochal act of societal self-harm.

[**Please donate to support our work**](https://donate.stripe.com/8x24gzcYH28s34MbHf3AY04?ref=abolishwestminster.com)

And yet, while the government rightly takes this approach at home, the Foreign Office is working hard around the world to help Shell and BP secure contracts to explore for and exploit ever more oil and gas fields, scorching any chance of avoiding climate catastrophe. BP, in particular, has spent recent years drilling through the hull of our civilisation. On 26 February 2025, the oil giant finally abandoned its previous pretence that it cared about climate breakdown. Speaking to investors in London that day, the company’s then CEO Murray Auchincloss [said that](https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2025/feb/26/airports-expansion-gatwick-heathrow-economy-bank-of-england-business-live-news?ref=abolishwestminster.com) it had gone “too far, too fast” towards renewables over the previous years. As a result, he announced what the *Guardian* called “a drastic pullback from green energy in favour of oil and gas investments”. 

And as the company has travelled the world searching for more hydrocarbons, there has always been an office full of friendly assistants keen to help with introductions, lobby foreign governments, and polish reputations: otherwise known as British embassies.

For the last year, I’ve been pestering the Foreign Office for details of meetings between diplomats and the UK’s oil giants. Mostly they’ve done what they can to frustrate me. But the information I have managed to dig out has revealed a government whose approach to oil and gas extraction is a bit like a parent who loudly tells their own children that drugs are bad, while introducing all of the neighbours’ kids to the local heroin dealer. 

In the previous essays in this series, I’ve looked at some of the harder ways in which the British state props up the oil industry. In the first piece, I explained how British trade deals are often used to force governments around the world to allow fossil fuels to be extracted, even when they don’t want them to be. In the second, I looked at how a lot of British military strategy has more to do with protecting oil industry shipping lanes than with defending our archipelago. In the third, I explored how Britain and its network of offshore territories provide tax havens for the oil industry; and in the fourth, I asked how English law became a protective shell for oil companies worldwide. In this essay, I’m going to look at how the softer end of British power is used to prop up the oil industry - and, specifically, how British embassies around the world are used to promote BP and Shell.

## Central Asia

In September 2025, Uzbekistan’s authoritarian president Shavkat Mirziyoyev [announced that](https://www.gazeta.uz/en/2025/09/18/gas/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) a “very large gas field” had been discovered through a borehole drilled 6.5km under the Ustyurt plateau, a desert that extends between the country and neighbouring Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. 

Fortunately for BP, it had a longstanding base from which to expand into the territory - just over the Caspian Sea in Azerbaijan, where it has a close friendship with the British embassy.

Five months after the announcement, in February this year, in a ceremony in the British embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, BP’s vice president for the Caspian region, Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, became one of the first two Azerbaijani nationals to [be awarded an honorary OBE](https://www.bp.com/en%5Faz/azerbaijan/home/news/press-releases/bp-vp-honoured-with-honorary-Officer-of-UKs-Order-of-British-Empire-title.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com). The embassy said he was being recognised for “his services to the development of UK-Azerbaijan relations, particularly for his role at BP in fostering positive economic, social, and cultural impact in Azerbaijan”.

The prize marked another milestone in a longstanding partnership between the oil company and Britain’s representatives in the Caucasian petrostate. Documents I got from the Foreign Office under transparency laws show that UK diplomats in the country had met with BP nine times between July 2024 - when the Labour government was elected - and August 2025\. The minutes of one of these meetings show two partner organisations updating each other on their affairs. During the course of the conversation, for example, the British ambassador asks if BP will chip in funding to support a dual degree programme between Warwick Manufacturing Group - a department of the University of Warwick - and Azerbaijan State Industry and Oil University, which the oil giant [seems to have then done](https://www.bp.com/en%5Faz/azerbaijan/home/news/press-releases/bp-contributes-to-renewable-energy-education-in-Azerbaijan.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com). In September 2025, the embassy and BP [were co-hosts](https://www.facebook.com/profile/100068974757291/search/?q=bp) of an “[Azerbaijan-UK policy forum](https://idd.az/en/pressroom/2235?ref=abolishwestminster.com)”. 

Indeed, this relationship goes back more than a century. As Peter Geoghegan [has set out](https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n21/peter-geoghegan/short-cuts?ref=abolishwestminster.com), Azerbaijan’s oil fields were first auctioned off in the late 19th century*,* by Alexander II of Russia. A week after the 1917 October revolution in Moscow, the ‘Baku commune’ took control and expropriated the oil infrastructure, creating the world’s first nationalised oil company. Britain responded by sending in troops, occupying the country in November 1918, in order to protect the claims of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, BP’s predecessor. It was in this context that Whitehall handed the Armenian-speaking Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan, starting the eponymous conflict that continues to this day. The countries then joined the Soviet Union, and British interests dissipated for 70 years. But in 1991, Azerbaijan regained its independence as the Soviet Union collapsed.

Combing through papers about ministerial visits between Britain and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule, I could see clearly that the British government’s main interest in the new country was helping BP secure lucrative oil deals there - which it eventually did in the so-called deal of the century. As [I revealed on *Declassified*](https://www.declassifieduk.org/britain-trained-kgb-veterans-police-force-after-major-oil-deal/?ref=abolishwestminster.com)*,* this seems to have extended to the British government’s providing the country’s brutal ‘security’ services with Met police ‘counter-terrorism’ training, in effect putting a finger on the scales of the re-emerging Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, in which Britain was and is officially neutral.

This friendship between the government and the oil giant was so close that, before Britain opened its embassy building in the new country, the ambassador and his team worked out of the BP offices there. BP eventually got the contract after it sent the recently ex-PM Margaret Thatcher over to personally deliver multi-million-pound cheques as part of their negotiations. In 2013, when [a major investment decision](https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/azeri-gas-project-investment-decision-134351023.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com) was made between BP and Azerbaijan, it appears to have effectively been announced by the then British ambassador. These days, [between 20%](https://www.lloydsbanktrade.com/en/market-potential/azerbaijan/investment?ref=abolishwestminster.com) and 30% [of foreign direct investment](https://caliber.az/en/post/azerbaijan-united-kingdom-reset-relations?ref=abolishwestminster.com) in the petrostate comes from the UK, primarily via its energy sector. 

And so, as BP sought to [expand](https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYb6a9yu4xG/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) across the Caspian Sea, its close relationship with British state representatives in Central Asia seems to have been crucial. In February 2026 - five months after the Ustyurt gas field had been discovered - foreign secretary Yvette Cooper [hosted the first “ministerial dialogue”](https://gov.uz/en/mfa/news/view/137562?ref=abolishwestminster.com) in London with five Central Asian countries. According to the Uzbek government, energy was one of the key areas the talks focused on. During their trip, they say, they met with “members of the Management Board of BP, during which ongoing energy sector reforms in Uzbekistan, prospects for advancing major joint projects, development of the Ustyurt project \[and\] exploration of additional oil and gas opportunities” were discussed. 

I asked the FCDO if it was fair to say that then foreign secretary Yvette Cooper facilitated this meeting between Uzbek officials and BP. The department didn’t respond.

In May 2026, eight months after the “very large gas field” was discovered, BP and the Azerbaijani state oil and gas company, SOCAR, signed a production [sharing agreement](https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/bp-enters-north-ustyurt-psa-in-uzbekistan.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com) for “six blocks in the North Ustyurt region” of Uzbekistan. At the [centre of the negotiations was](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bakhtiyar-aslanbayli-obe-aab3669%5Fas-part-of-the-oil-and-gas-of-uzbekistan-ugcPost-7460338878650982400-MQYn/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) BP’s vice president for the Caspian region, Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli OBE, who proudly [announced the deal](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bakhtiyar-aslanbayli-obe-aab3669%5Fwe-are-pleased-to-announce-bps-entry-into-ugcPost-7460243865002754049-eSgs/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) on his LinkedIn page, where his name is garnished with its British state title. 

 "We believe Uzbekistan has significant resource potential and see this as an opportunity to support the exploration and development of the country’s oil and gas resources, delivering long‑term benefits to the region," said a BP spokesperson. In June 2026, as plans to start drilling were announced, a BP executive was quoted [in the Uzbek press](https://www.gazeta.uz/en/2025/09/18/gas/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) as saying, “We are entering the Uzbek market not with the aim of short-term, but rather 50–60-year strategic cooperation." Climate science dictates that the world [must have reached net-zero emissions](https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/net-zero-coalition?ref=abolishwestminster.com) in 23 years’ time in order to keep global heating below 1.5C.

## Venezuela and Trinidad

Over the twelve months before president Trump sent US troops to depose and capture Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, the British embassy in Caracas met with Shell six times, documents released under freedom of information laws show. 

Before the coup, Shell had been “trying for years to advance ‌the 4.2-trillion-cubic-feet Dragon gas field in Venezuelan waters’, according to Reuters. Within four months of the new president taking over, “advanced talks with Venezuela's government to develop four large areas” [were under way](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-advanced-talks-with-venezuela-more-gas-areas-sources-say-2026-04-01/?ref=abolishwestminster.com). 4.2 trillion cubic feet of gas would likely produce roughly [231 million tonnes of CO2](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references?ref=abolishwestminster.com#:~:text=The%20average%20carbon%20dioxide%20coefficient,cubic%20foot%20%28EPA%202024b%29.). UK annual domestic emissions are [roughly 371 million tonnes](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/methodologies/measuringukgreenhousegasemissions?ref=abolishwestminster.com) of CO2 equivalent.

When I asked for the minutes of the last of those meetings, the Foreign Office told me: “No minutes or readouts were made following the meeting, and no notes are held,” something that one civil servant in the department told me was “very surprising - we have to minute everything.”

As a result, it’s not clear what the embassy and the oil giant discussed. The Foreign Office did, however, share some of their notes from a separate meeting between Shell and Jennifer Chapman, the then junior minister for Latin America and the Caribbean, which officials said in their briefing to the minister was “an opportunity to discuss Shell’s deal with Venezuela and Trinidad \[redacted\]. You should … seek updates from Shell on their investment in the Dragon and Loran Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) fields; \[redacted\].” 

Most of the notes of what was then discussed at the meeting are entirely redacted, because apparently you have no right to know what our ministers discuss with the companies bleeding the planet out.

What we do know is that, [for more than a century](https://www.declassifieduk.org/one-hundred-years-of-british-interference-in-venezuela/?ref=abolishwestminster.com), the British government has worked hard to support the interests of British oil companies in Venezuela. 

Just offshore from Venezuela is the Caribbean country Trinidad and Tobago. Of ten current major projects listed on BP’s website, three [are located in (or offshore from) Trinidad](https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/investors/upstream-major-projects.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com), and Shell has also operated on (and off) the islands [for more than a century](https://www.shell.com/who-we-are/contact-us/contact-trinidad.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com). 

They have long done so with the active support of the British diplomatic service. When a new British high commissioner was appointed in January 2025, he met with the country’s energy minister that same month, [discussing](https://www.energy.gov.tt/minister-young-meets-with-british-high-commissioner/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) the “significance of the two British-based oil and gas companies, Shell plc and BP plc, to both countries”. 

Both firms appear to have a close relationship with the British high commission in Port of Spain, the country’s capital. When the high commissioner hosted a birthday party for King Charles in 2025, for example, it was “made possible” by various corporate sponsors, including BP and Shell. The party included a display of photos from the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, helping to greenwash the oil giants. 

Likewise, at the Trinidad and Tobago energy conference 2025, the high commissioner [spoke at the ‘BP breakfast](https://www.instagram.com/p/DGDyycnOV6u/?ref=abolishwestminster.com)’ about the ‘energy transition’ - which is a bit like giving a lecture on peace sponsored by an arms company. 

In February, BP [confirmed that](https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-confirms-it-is-seeking-ofac-license-venezuelatrinidad-gas-field-2026-02-10/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) it is seeking a licence from the US government to drill the Cocuina-Manakin gas field on the maritime border between Venezuela and Trinidad, which it estimates contains more than 1 trillion cubic feet of gas, equating to about 55 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.

## West African frontiers

Mauritania and Senegal, in West Africa, are similarly on the new hydrocarbon frontier. Since the Tortue gas field was discovered in 2015 beneath an area of seabed that stretches between their waters, both BP and Shell have had a major presence there. Though [Shell withdrew in 2024](https://www.mees.com/2025/4/4/news-in-brief/shell-quits-mauritania-as-tortue-timeline-slips/38635d50-1150-11f0-a210-852eef297ab1?ref=abolishwestminster.com), BP [has had more luck](https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/bp-flows-first-gas-at-greater-tortue-ahmeyim-lng-project.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com), leading to one of its [biggest ever projects](https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/energy-in-focus/gta-project-fpso-arrival.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com). Before 2018, Britain didn’t have an ambassador stationed in Mauritania; Morocco’s head of mission, and before that, Senegal’s, oversaw the post. But in May that year, Britain appointed its first resident ambassador to the role. [Two months later](https://www.offshore-energy.biz/shell-enters-two-blocks-offshore-mauritania/?ref=abolishwestminster.com), Shell signed a contract to explore for hydrocarbons in the country’s territory. The civil servant appointed to the post, Samuel Thomas, had previously [worked on issues relating to oil](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/change-of-her-majestys-ambassador-to-mauritania-in-may-2018?ref=abolishwestminster.com) and energy in Libya, Russia and Iraq. Later that same year, BP and partners [got approval](https://www.cffacape.org/publications-blog/2019/08/25/2019-8-25-how-bp-is-drilling-through-the-worlds-largest-deep-water-coral-reefnbsp?ref=abolishwestminster.com) for their major subsea drilling project off the coast of the country. 

Between May 2018 and this year, Freedom of Information Act requests from *Abolish Westminster* show that British embassy staff in Mauritania met with BP more than 40 times. While the information released listed multiple individual meetings on specific dates, it also lumped some together (for example as “2023: multiple”) implying the real number could be significantly higher.

Before Thomas, the final person to hold the joint post of ambassador to Morocco and to Mauritania was Thomas Reilly, who was appointed in 2017, after the gas discovery. Before going to Morocco, [Reilly was](https://www.gov.uk/government/people/thomas-reilly?ref=abolishwestminster.com) Special Advisor in charge of International Government Relations and Regulatory Affairs at Shell - a post he held in the middle of a career otherwise spent in the Foreign Office. In 2017, another former ambassador had been involved in launching a Mauritania British Business Council at an event in the British Museum, at which BP’s Bernard Looney spoke about the “world class potential” of the Tortue gas field”. Other speakers included Mauritania’s energy minister, and the then British trade minister Greg Hands. The British Museum has long accepted sponsorship money from BP.

In June 2025, the British Embassy in Senegal helped launch a Senegal-UK Chamber of Commerce. “As the MSGBC \[Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry\] region cements its position as one of the world’s fastest-growing energy frontiers, the Chamber’s involvement underscores the expanding role of UK engagement across West Africa’s energy and extractive industries,” the [organisation’s website brags](https://www.zawya.com/en/press-release/africa-press-releases/senegal-uk-chamber-of-commerce-to-support-msgbc-oil-gas-power-2025-as-strategic-partner-cbn1fp9c?ref=abolishwestminster.com). “The UK has played an important role in shaping Senegal and the wider MSGBC region’s energy landscape – from pioneering LNG developments to advancing new frontiers,” stated Sandra Jeque, Project Director at South Africa-based Energy Capital & Power, a member of the chamber.

BP has sponsored parties at the Mauritanian embassy more than once - including for Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee, and for [Charles III’s 75th birthday](https://www.facebook.com/profile/100069375602473/search/?q=bp) in 2023, helping the controversial company buy a positive reputation in the country. Posting on Facebook, the embassy wrote: “Given His Majesty’s deep interest in environmental issues, guests were invited to take away a sapling with which to contribute to the greening of Nouakchott,” before adding: “We would like to express our deepest gratitude to the sponsors who made our celebration possible,” listing BP and the offshore drilling specialists Kosmos Energy.

![](https://cdn.mymidnight.blog/f3173935ed8ac4bf073c1bcd63171f8a/2026/10/data-src-image-f689fb33-f07d-48a1-9757-1a1a9d802241.jpeg)

*Then British Ambassador to Mauritania Colin Wells welcomes guests including the country’s foreign secretary to a Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Party in 2022, with Shell and BP logos on display. Image, UK in Mauritania, Facebook* 

In 2022, the campaign group Culture Unstained (where my wife works) used the Freedom of Information Act to extract documents from the Foreign Office relating to the relationship between BP and the British embassy in gas rich Egypt ahead of a UN climate conference in the country. As they put it at the time, the emails “paint a picture of diplomacy and networking with BP and the Egyptian government playing out through trade missions, Embassy receptions and at [polo events](https://twitter.com/GarethBayleyUK/status/1457373616400654337?ref=abolishwestminster.com) over the last year in spite of ongoing human rights concerns”.

This cosy relationship appears to have continued. Shell, BP and the large independent oil company Harbour Energy were all sponsors of the king’s birthday party at the [British embassy in Cairo](https://www.facebook.com/profile/100064306764946/search/?q=bp&locale=en%5FGB) last year.

## West Papua

After briefly winning independence from the Dutch empire, West Papua was annexed by Indonesia in 1963, and its people have long faced repression from their Jakarta-based rulers, which has always come alongside violent resource extraction and dangerous levels of deforestation of the world’s third-most significant tropical rainforest. 

According to the NGO Survival International, after 1963 Indonesia “embarked on a brutal and ongoing campaign of violence towards the West Papuan people, who have never accepted Indonesian rule. This has included rape, crucifixion, mutilation, aerial bombings, and alleged chemical weapons use. Experts have described such killings as part of a ‘Neglected Genocide’ and some estimates suggest that over 500,000 Indigenous West Papuan people have [been killed by the Indonesian military](https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/country-report-west-papua?ref=abolishwestminster.com) since the occupation began. All calls for West Papuan Independence are banned and West Papuans face up to 15 years in jail just for raising their national flag.”

BP has been drilling for liquefied natural gas in the Tangguh Bay area of the territory since 2009, leading to longstanding allegations that it is complicit in the violent oppression and deforestation of the territory. [Estimates from the Centre for Climate Crime and Climate Justice](https://newint.org/indigenous-peoples/2025/britains-complicity-tragedy-west-papua?ref=abolishwestminster.com) at Queen Mary University of London last year calculated that this project would produce over 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon - equivalent to the net reduction of all European Union emissions projected between the years 2015 and 2030.

Despite this, in May this year [BP announced](https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/news-and-insights/press-releases/bp-signs-three-production-sharing-contracts-in-Indonesia.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com) it had signed a deal to extend the project into two other nearby blocks in Papua. 

As ever, wherever BP has wanted to expand its carbon footprint, British diplomats have been ready to help it clean up its reputation. Two years ago, for example, the British embassy in Jakarta hosted a ceremony, witnessed by Indonesia’s energy and mineral resources minister, at which BP agreed to fund a British government [Chevening scholarship](https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en%5Fid/indonesia/home/news/press-releases/240823%20-%20ENG%20-%20Chevening%20bp.pdf?ref=abolishwestminster.com) programme, specifically for people from Papua.

According to documents secured by this newsletter under the Freedom of Information Act, British diplomats in Indonesia met with BP staff to discuss BP’s business in Papua sixteen times in the two years to May 2026, including one meeting between Murray Auchincloss, the then CEO of BP, and the British Ambassador in June 2025\. That evening, the British ambassador spoke at a cocktail reception in Jakarta [sponsored by BP](https://britcham.or.id/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Britcham-Handbook-Guide-2025-FA-E-Book.pdf?ref=abolishwestminster.com), described by organisers as an “evening of connection and good spirits”. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from this newsletter, the Foreign Office claimed it didn’t have any records of what was said at this meeting.

Since then, the embassy has launched ‘[quarterly updates](https://www.instagram.com/p/DYeQWC7k7ZW/?ref=abolishwestminster.com)’ with the British Chamber of Commerce, Indonesia, including briefings and networking sessions at the embassy. BP’s “head of policy and regulatory affairs” in the country (a title which is often a euphemism for “lobbyist”) [is a vice chair of the chamber](https://britcham.or.id/about-us/?ref=abolishwestminster.com).

## Texas

While much of Britain’s carbon diplomacy is taking place on these new frontiers, let’s not forget the land of the oilmen: Texas.

In recent years, the US has rapidly expanded extraction, making itself the world’s biggest oil producer, and BP has been on the front line of this planet-killing revolution. 

The company announced [in November 2025](https://www.bp.com/en%5Fus/united-states/home/news/features-and-highlights/bp-expands-offshore-operations-to-support-us-growth.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com): “We are modernizing and expanding our operations in the Gulf of America to safely produce more oil and gas, underscoring our commitment to continued investment in US energy production.”

Or, as Donald Trump put it a few weeks later, “[we will drill, baby, drill](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xSfg0qTBCHQ?ref=abolishwestminster.com).”

Again, as BP executives have squeezed the last breaths out of any hope of maintaining the climatic stability that allowed complex human civilisations to emerge and thrive over the last 12,000 years, British diplomats have cheerfully acted as their wingmen. Particularly helpful here is the consulate-general in Houston, Texas, whose diplomats had six formal meetings with BP staff between November 2024 and February 2026, according to information I got from the Foreign Office under transparency laws. 

In May 2026, for example, BP sponsored the Greater Houston LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce's [reception at the British Consulate-General](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brett-clanton-a2932699%5Fgrateful-for-the-opportunity-for-bp-america-activity-7456069888672186368-Aldi?ref=abolishwestminster.com), Houston, and a couple of months earlier the consul general hosted its annual “energy reception” at the British residence in Houston. The consul himself, meanwhile, [sits on the board](https://babctexas.org/about-babc-texas/board-of-directors-and-staff/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) of the British– American Business Council (Texas), along with representatives from BP and Exxon.

Describing one visit from the consul general to BP’s US headquarters in Houston [on its LinkedIn account](https://www.bp.com/en%5Fus/united-states/home/news/features-and-highlights/bps-gulf-of-america-investments-can-strengthen-americas-energy-future-today-and-tomorrow.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com) a few months ago, the consulate celebrated the fact that “BP plans to invest $5 billion annually in the US for five years… producing more of the energy the world needs.”

Much of that investment consists of expanding oil extraction from the Gulf of Mexico:

Meaning that the British government is cheering on BP’s expansion of oil production in the US, even as it bans it in the UK. 

## Social licence to operate

It’s easy to dismiss these snippets of soft power strung up like bunting around the world as meaningless. What does it matter that Shell shells out for the drinks at a birthday party for the king in Trinidad? Isn’t it a good thing if BP is funding much needed scholarships for impoverished Papuans?

That’s a mistake. 

These sorts of soft-power arrangements are crucial for Shell and BP for two reasons.

First, the world operates on the basis of who you know. Britain has one of the world’s biggest networks of diplomatic missions - that is, embassies, high commissions, consulates and the like - each of which is deeply networked into the government and business communities of their host countries. Our diplomats are funded by taxpayers to build these connections, which they then use to promote ‘British’ businesses at networking events, parties, and the like. I use inverted commas because, in reality, while Shell and BP may have HQs in London, they are global corporations that do everything they can to avoid paying taxes to the British Treasury. 

Similarly, the cultural work of embassies is important for helping the companies launder their reputations. Because of the legacy of the empire, British diplomats can pick from a verdant herb garden of world famous institutions - the monarchy, universities, English literature, British museums - to garnish toxic offers from some of the world’s biggest polluters. For companies that are regularly smeared in the stench of their last scandal, this is a profoundly useful service.

Chris Gerrard, co-director of Culture Unstained, explained how this works:

“Just as polluting companies like BP need a formal licence in order to undertake drilling for fossil fuels, they also need a ‘social licence to operate’ - the trust and consent of wider society and those who stand to be impacted by their business. In order to pursue contentious projects, there needs to be that ‘buy-in’ and agreement from relevant stakeholders, policy-makers and local communities. Fossil fuel producers like BP - and the tobacco industry before them - engage in cynical strategies for manufacturing that social licence and consent.

“This concept of social licence is multifaceted, though, and the insidious nature of these strategies is not always fully understood. It is about a corporation like BP burnishing its brand and boosting its profile among the wider public; when it was the ‘Sustainability Partner’ of the London Olympics in 2012, it helped the company to displace the toxic associations of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill just two years earlier with a clean, green corporate identity.” 

Sponsoring things like scholarships and embassy parties allows Shell and BP “to cultivate an image as responsible corporate citizens that are in touch with the public mood. Of course, BP and its peers need new fields to be licensed in a practical and legal sense, but that process flows all the more freely when its executives are seen by policy-makers not as experts with niche concerns about oil and gas extraction but as corporate statesmen,” he added. 

It is “over canapés at an exhibition opening or a BP sponsored party for the king’s birthday - not at a carefully minuted meeting - where its executives can speak freely and play the role of a philanthropic friend to policy-makers. So, when embassies invite BP to sponsor these private parties, they are consciously creating the conditions for unaccountable influence to take place, while also handing cultural and political power on a plate to a private, profit-making company. Cosying up to BP in this way invites a blurring of the boundaries that actively undermines the democratic role that embassies should play as branches of the UK government, not as champions of polluting corporate interests.”. 

These strategies are, he says, “the very means by which they can remain cemented to the state, its institutions and the cultural values it promotes”.

“Just like the British Museum helps BP to clean up its toxic image with a high-profile sponsorship deal,” he concludes, “these embassies are also engaged in a form of reputation laundering by helping BP and Shell to present themselves as respected corporate citizens and champions of UK plc, rather than the profit-making polluters they actually are. Sponsoring these swanky events only aids these oil giants in deflecting attention from their links to human rights abuses, genocide and climate breakdown.”

If you ignore the harsh realities of atmospheric physics, none of this is surprising. British embassies use their soft power around the world to promote semi-British businesses. But once you consider the basic maths at the core of the climate crisis, it’s clear how reckless our diplomats are being. In 2015 [climate scientists warned us](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/22/earth-day-scientists-warning-fossil-fuels-?ref=abolishwestminster.com) that 75% of the fossil fuel reserves we knew about then had to stay in the ground if we were going to avoid dangerously destabilising the planet’s climate systems. Continuing to seek new fossil fuel reserves more than a decade later means knowingly choosing to do something that will result in millions of deaths. A paper in the [*Harvard Law Review* in 2024 argued](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4335779&ref=abolishwestminster.com) that, because of “the extreme lethality of fossil fuel companies’ conduct and their longstanding awareness of the catastrophic consequences”, they could be found guilty of “every type of homicide short of first degree murder” in jurisdictions across the US. British diplomats are, fairly obviously, facilitating this mass social murder. 

## History

In a sense, none of this is new. The British state - unlike many of its European equivalents - traditionally conducted much of its imperialism through a series of corporate fronts. The East India Company, the Virginia Company, the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Royal African Company, all founded in the 17th century, were the primary means by which wealthy Britons conquered the world. The Northern Department, which was to become the Foreign Office, was founded in 1660, when the Stuarts were returned to the throne. The Royal African Company - the biggest single transporter of enslaved people during the trans-Atlantic slave trade - was founded by the Stuarts later that same year. 

For most of its history, the Foreign Office existed as one member of this family of British overseas institutions, which were often overseen by the same crisscrossing networks of people, from buildings within a short walk of each other in central London. It developed a longstanding sense that ‘the national interest’ it exists to preserve was the same thing as the interests of those corporations. 

In the early 20th century, BP became a crucial one of those corporations. It was founded as Anglo-Persian Oil in 1909\. In 1914 the government bought out 51% of its shares, to ensure a stable supply of oil for the Royal Navy during WWI, and retained a majority stake in the company until Thatcher sold it off between 1979 and 1987.

Throughout this period, much of British foreign policy was focused around supporting BP and, to some extent, Shell. To give just two examples, files declassified in recent years have shown that Harold Wilson [secretly armed](https://www.declassifieduk.org/how-britains-labour-government-facilitated-the-massacre-of-biafrans-in-nigeria-to-protect-its-oil-interests/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) Nigeria’s brutal war on secessionist Biafra in the 1960s at the behest of the companies, and that Shell and BP secretly [funded the government’s covert cold war propaganda operations](https://www.declassifieduk.org/exclusive-how-shell-and-bp-financed-britains-cold-war-propaganda-machine/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) as a means to access oil in newly liberated former colonies. 

Today, if you flick through registers of meetings held by top Whitehall officials, it’s clear that BP and Shell retain their special relationship with the British government, despite the fact that both companies are actively undermining any chance we have of avoiding catastrophic climate breakdown - and despite the fact that both companies are in reality global corporations with little loyalty to the UK.

In some ways, this situation has got worse under Labour. 

## “The salesforce for the UK economy”

In 1997, the Labour government founded the Department for International Development (DfID), which, in theory at least, existed to “promote sustainable development and eliminate international poverty”. My impression was, on the whole, that it recruited the kind of staff who were genuinely committed to that aim, and particular culture followed from that.

In 2020, under Boris Johnson, DfID was merged into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office - producing the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. But, while the Tories forced the merger, it’s a Labour government that has destroyed the UK’s aid efforts and turned British foreign policy into an advertising service.

Almost as soon as the new government took power in 2024, British diplomats were given clear instructions to prioritise promoting ‘British’ businesses over the more traditional tasks of intergovernmental diplomacy, with then foreign secretary David Lammy [describing Britain’s diplomatic service](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/diplomats-sharing-global-business-expertise-with-british-firms?ref=abolishwestminster.com) as “the salesforce for the UK economy”.

As part of the same package of measures, Lammy [announced that ambassadors would now be judged](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/ambassadors-to-be-judged-on-ability-to-generate-trade-for-uk-says-lammy-b2718460.html?ref=abolishwestminster.com) on their success in drumming up deals for British businesses around the world. Inevitably, given that Shell and BP are two of Britain’s biggest companies, they are significant beneficiaries of this process.

Then, in 2025, the government announced that it would be [slashing the UK’s aid budget from 0.5% to 0.3%](https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10243/?ref=abolishwestminster.com), while the department as a whole has had deep cuts imposed on its budget as part of a 2030 restructuring plan - [with up to 2,000 jobs](https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/fcdo-faces-new-strike-ballot-over-restructure?ref=abolishwestminster.com) likely to be lost, according to some estimates. As one civil servant, speaking on condition of anonymity, put it to me, this feels to many like the final blow for the old Department for International Development, with many former DfID staff now expecting to lose their jobs as the department shifts aggressively into shilling for ‘British’ business. 

Whether the new foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, will change any of this is yet to be seen. 

## Lack of accountability

British foreign policy is, to a remarkable extent, unaccountable to the MPs we elect. The rights to sign treaties, deploy troops and set strategies for diplomats are wielded by ministers [under the ‘royal prerogative’](https://bfpg.co.uk/2026/02/government-foreign-policy-must-reckon-with-an-increasingly-muscular-parliament/?ref=abolishwestminster.com) \- that is, the powers ministers inherit from the monarchy and, in theory (though they don’t say it any more) from God. 

Instead, Foreign Office strategy is overseen by its [Supervisory Board](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/foreign-commonwealth-development-office/about/our-governance?ref=abolishwestminster.com), which is made up of departmental ministers, senior civil servants, and a group of ‘non-executive directors’ who FCDOcurrently include a senior adviser to the consultancy McKinsey, whose global role in promoting firms driving climate change has [been widely criticised](https://climate-reporting.org/mckinsey-fossil-fuels-climate/?ref=abolishwestminster.com).

Last year, [I revealed](https://democracyforsale.substack.com/p/lammy-appointed-labour-donor-to-plum) that the former UK president of WPP, the world’s biggest fossil fuel advertiser, was appointed to the committee by Lammy after she had donated £5,000 to his office during the election campaign. She has since stood down from the role. 

When I told the Green Party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Ellie Chowns, how the Foreign Office was helping BP and Shell drill for new hydrocarbons around the world, she was furious. “Reports of British diplomats helping to secure further fossil fuel expansion abroad are beyond belief – representatives of the UK government should be working to promote UK values and strengthen international relationships, not acting as cheerleaders for climate-wrecking oil and gas giants like BP,” she said. 

“The scientific consensus is crystal clear: we need to urgently ramp up our climate action if we are to avoid catastrophe. The UK must recognise this and demonstrate the political integrity to stand up to vested interests like oil and gas corporations, not support them in causing further damage to our planet.”

I asked the Foreign Office if it wanted to respond to the claim that all of this activity directly undermines the UK's own widely professed climate ambitions, and is therefore contrary to the national interest. It didn’t.

Over the past few years, climate activists have rightly criticised cultural institutions for allowing big oil companies to clean up their reputations by allowing them to become ‘patrons of the arts’. I think it should be as controversial for a British ambassador to shill for Shell as it is for the British museum to accept sponsorship from BP. 

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