Environment

Oil giant BP is seen as a prime takeover target. Is a blockbuster mega-merger in the cards?

Published

7 days ago

April 15, 2025

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BP logo is seen at a gas station in this illustration photo taken in Poland on March 15, 2025.

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Oil giant BP has been thrust into the spotlight as a prime takeover candidate — but energy analysts question whether any of the likeliest suitors will rise to the occasion.

Britain’s beleaguered energy giant, which holds its annual general meeting on Thursday, has recently sought to resolve something of an identity crisis by launching a fundamental reset.

Seeking to rebuild investor confidence, BP in February pledged to slash renewable spending and boost annual expenditure on its core business of oil and gas. CEO Murray Auchincloss has said that the pivot is starting to attract “significant interest” in the firm’s non-core assets.

BP’s green strategy U-turn follows a protracted period of underperformance relative to its industry peers, with its depressed share price reigniting speculation of a prospective tie-up with domestic rival Shell. U.S. oil giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron have also been touted as possible suitors for the £54.75 billion ($71.61 billion) oil major.

Shell declined to comment on the speculation. Spokespersons for BP, Exxon and Chevron did not respond to a request for comment when contacted by CNBC.

“Certainly, BP is a potential takeover target — no doubt about that,” Maurizio Carulli, energy and materials analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC by video call.

“I would conceptualize the question of ‘will Shell bid for BP’ in the more general consolidation that it is happening in the resources sector, both oil but also mining — particularly in the past year a lot of companies thought that to buy was better than to build,” he added.

A Shell logo in Austin, Texas.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images News | Getty Images

In the energy sector, for example, Exxon Mobil completed its $60 billion purchase of Pioneer Natural Resources in May last year, while Chevron still seeks to acquire Hess for $53 billion. The latter agreement remains shrouded in legal uncertainty, however, with an arbitration hearing scheduled for next month.

In the mining space, market speculation kicked into overdrive at the start of the year following reports of a potential tie-up between industry giants Rio Tinto and Glencore. Both companies declined to comment at the time.

Never say never, right? I think even Exxon-Chevron in the depth of the pandemic held talks so I think that would have been even wilder to say.

Allen Good

Director of equity research at Morningstar

Quilter Cheviot’s Carulli named Chevron as a potential suitor for BP, particularly if the U.S. energy giant’s pursuit of Hess falls through.

Speculation about a potential merger between Shell and BP, meanwhile, is far from new. Carulli said that while the rumors have some merit, a prospective deal would likely trigger antitrust concerns.

Perhaps more importantly, Carulli added that a move to acquire BP would conflict with Shell’s steadfast commitment to capital discipline under CEO Wael Sawan.

‘An existential crisis’

“Never say never, right? I think even Exxon-Chevron in the depth of the pandemic held talks so I think that would have been even wilder to say,” Allen Good, director of equity research at Morningstar, told CNBC by telephone.

“I wouldn’t take anything off on the table. You know, oil and gas is facing an existential crisis. Now, views differ on how soon that crisis will come to head. I think we’re still decades away,” Good said.

For Shell, Morningstar’s Good said that any pursuit of BP would likely be an attempt to merge the two British peers, as opposed to an outright acquisition — although he said he doesn’t expect such a prospect to materialize in the near term.

The sun sets behind burning gas flares at the Dora (Daura) Oil Refinery Complex in Baghdad on December 22, 2024.

Ahmad Al-rubaye | Afp | Getty Images

Asked about the likelihood of Chevron seeking to purchase BP if a deal to acquire Hess collapses, Morningstar’s Good said he couldn’t rule it out.

“BP certainly doesn’t have the growth prospects that Hess does, but you could get a situation where, again, like I said with Shell, you’d have Chevron acquiring BP, stripping out a lot of costs, certainly the headquarters would no longer be in London … but it doesn’t address the growth concerns ex-Permian for Chevron. So, in that case, I would be a little skeptical,” Good said.

“The issues these companies are facing are to please shareholders, and the two ways to do that really are to reduce costs and return cash to shareholders. So if you can continue to lean into that model somehow, then that’s the probably the way to do it,” he added.

What next for BP?

Michele Della Vigna, head of EMEA natural resources research at Goldman Sachs, described BP’s recent strategic reset as “very wise” and “thoughtful,” but acknowledged that it may not have gone far enough for an activist investor.

U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management has reportedly built a near 5% stake to become one of BP’s largest shareholders. Activist investor Follow This, meanwhile, recently pushed for investors to vote against Helge Lund’s reappointment as chair at BP’s upcoming shareholder meeting in protest over the firm’s recent strategy U-turn. BP has since said that Lund will step down, likely in 2026, kickstarting a succession process.

“I think there are three major optionalities in BP’s portfolio that any activist investor would love to see monetized. The first one is not all in BP’s hands, it’s the monetization of the Rosneft stake,” Della Vigna told CNBC over a video call.

BP announced it was abandoning its 19.75% shareholding in Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft shortly after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022. It had marked a costly and abrupt end to more than three decades of activity in the country.

CEO of BP Murray Auchincloss speaks during the CERAWeek oil summit in Houston, Texas, on March 19, 2024.

Mark Felix | AFP | Getty Images

A second optionality for BP, Della Vigna said, is the firm’s marketing and convenience business.

“I mean, within BP, a company that trades on three times EBITDA, there’s a division that can trade at 10 times EBITDA, right? Amazing. You can make the same point for a lot of the other Big Oils,” Della Vigna said.

EBITDA is a standard metric that refers to a firm’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.

“The third option is BP is a U.S.- centered energy company — and it’s clear, right? BP is the most U.S.- exposed of all the majors, more than Exxon and Chevron,” Della Vigna said, noting that 40% of BP’s cash flow comes from the U.S.

“So, being listed in the U.K., when the U.K. gets you the biggest discount of any other region in Big Oil, doesn’t feel right. I think some form of relocation or transatlantic merger may be worth considering,” he added.

Environment

Tesla settles another wrongful death lawsuit that has big implications

Published

3 hours ago

April 22, 2025

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Tesla settles another wrongful death lawsuit that has big implications

Tesla has settled another wrongful death lawsuit, and it has significant implications based on Tesla’s legal strategy of not settling unless it is at fault.

Admitting a mistake is difficult. We humans are not good at it, which is why I respected Elon Musk when he said that Tesla wouldn’t seek victory in “just” legal cases against it and would “never settle an unjust case” against the company:

We will never seek victory in a just case against us, even if we will probably win. – We will never surrender/settle an unjust case against us, even if we will probably lose..

This strategy also means that if Tesla ever settles a case, it is admitting that it was in the wrong, even if settlements often come with no admission of wrongdoing.

Tesla has very rarely settled cases and Musk made this comment back in 2022. A lot has changed since then.

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In fact, around the same time Musk made that comment, he announced that he was building a team of “hardcore lawyers” at Tesla to pursue legal cases aggressively.

But it started to happen over the last few years.

In the UK, a Tesla owner challenged Tesla over its failure to deliver on its full self-driving claims and won a settlement that represented a refund of his purchase cost for FSD, with interest, after filing a claim in small claims court in 2023.

Last year, Tesla also finally settled a wrongful death lawsuit regarding the death of Model X owner Walter Huang, who was one of the first Tesla owners to die while using Autopilot back in 2018.

Now, Tesla has settled a second wrongful death lawsuit.

The estate of Clyde Leach, a Tesla Model Y owner, sued Tesla for wrongful death after his Model Y “suddenly accelerated, went off the road, and slammed into a pillar at an Ohio gas station.” Leach, 72, died from “blunt force trauma, burns, and other injuries” after the vehicle burned down following the impact.

Unlike Huang’s case, the lawsuit didn’t focus specifically on Tesla’s Autopilot or other ADAS features, but it claimed that a defect led to a “sudden acceleration” that contributed to the crash.

There have been numerous allegations of “sudden unintended acceleration” against Tesla vehicles, but in most cases, the evidence has pointed to the driver mistakenly pressing the wrong pedal.

This makes it particularly interesting that Tesla, which claims never to settle unjust claims against the company, has confirmed that it settled the case with Leach’s estate in a filing on Monday in federal court in San Francisco.

The terms of the settlement have not been released.

Electrek’s Take

In Tesla’s early days, there were numerous claims of “sudden unintended acceleration” regarding Tesla vehicles. I would often look into them, and we even had third parties review the telemetric logs; you could almost always prove pedal misplacement.

I assumed some of it also had to do with people not being used to vehicles that accelerate as quickly as Teslas, leading to less forgiving situations when pressing the wrong pedal.

However, considering Tesla settled this case and Musk’s claim that Tesla would not settle an “unjust” claim, there could be a case that sudden acceleration could occur with Tesla vehicles.

This could complicate a lot of other cases against Tesla.

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Environment

GM doubles down on Mexico, “no plans” to move EV production to US

Published

4 hours ago

April 21, 2025

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GM: ‘No plans’ to move production of EV models out of Mexico — Chevy Equinox with “Mexico” sepia filter.

Despite the will-they, won’t-they uncertainty surrounding the future of tariffs and union jobs and – let’s face it – just about everything else in every industry these days, GM says it has no plans to move production of its Ultium-based EVs from Mexico to the US.

GM has exclusively produced electric cars at its plant in Ramos Arizpe, Mexico since last year, and has created some 5,000 new jobs in the area according to economist Raquel Buenrostro, who currently serves as Mexico’s Secretary of Anti-Corruption and Good Government. And those cars – including the popular Chevy Equinox EV and Honda’s hot-selling Prologue – have been huge hits in their respective segments.

The General seems to know a good thing when it sees one, so it should come as no surprise to learn that GM has no plans to scuttle its assembly lines out of the country.

“At this time, GM has no plans to halt or relocate production of any of our EV models made in Mexico,” the director of GM de México’s EV operations, Adrián Enciso, told the Spanish-language newspaper, Milenio. “It’s possible that additional models, such as (the new 2026 Chevy Spark) could be built here, too.”

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Market Watch is reporting that the proposed tariffs, if they take effect, could raise GM’s cost to make electric cars in Mexico by up to $4,300 per vehicle. But while that could put a significant per-unit dent in GM’s profits, it’s worth noting that the EVs might continue to be built in Mexico and sold in Canada and other markets – the new Spark, especially, is targeted towards Central and South America, anyway.

And, frankly, GM can afford it.

SOURCE: Mexico News Daily.

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Environment

$350 million autonomous equipment sale is biggest in Epiroc history

Published

5 hours ago

April 21, 2025

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0 million autonomous equipment sale is biggest in Epiroc history

Epiroc to supply Fortescue with $223 million in autonomous mining equipment

The mining equipment experts at Epiroc will supply a fleet of autonomous, zero-emission electric Pit Viper 271E and SmartROC D65 BE drill rigs at a number of Australian mines operated by multinational metals firm, Fortescue.

The $350 million AUD (approx. $225 million US) deal will see Epiroc AB supply its customer, Fortescue, with a number of blast hole drill rigs powered by either a cable connection to grid energy or, for more remote sites, batteries.

Fortescue will put the rigs to work at its iron ore mines in the Pilbara region in Western Australia. The driverless machines will eventually be operated fully autonomously, overseen by remote operators at Fortescue’s Integrated Operations Centre in Perth – more than 1,500 km away!

Epiroc says the machines will eliminate around 35 million liters of diesel consumption annually, according to Fortescue.

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“Fortescue is at the forefront of the mining industry in reducing emissions from operations, and in using automation to strengthen safety and productivity, and we are proud to support them on this important effort,” says Epiroc President Helena Hedblom. “Not only is this the largest contract we have ever received, but it is also a major step forward for our electric-powered surface equipment. We look forward to contributing to Fortescue’s continued success now and in the future.”

The Pit Viper 271 E rotary blast hole drill rig that offers the same levels of performance that the diesel Pit Viper line is acclaimed for. Its patented cable feed system that prolongs component longevity and reduces operational costs. The SmartROC D65 BE is a new, battery-electric version of the proven SmartROC D65 drill rig. They’re manufactured in Texas and Sweden, respectively.

Fortescue has been a pioneer in the electrification of the mining industry, whether it’s converting its massive Liebherr excavators to electric, funding the development of 6MW EV chargers, or deploying autonomous electric drill rigs like these in their mines – they’re well on their way to achieving their goal of carbon neutral operations by 2030.

Electrek’s Take

Pit Viper 271E cable electric drill rig; via Epiroc AB.

From drilling and rigging to heavy haul solutions, companies like Fortescue and Epiroc are proving that electric equipment is more than up to the task of moving dirt and pulling stuff out of the ground. At the same time, rising demand for nickel, lithium, and phosphates combined with the natural benefits of electrification are driving the adoption of electric mining machines while a persistent operator shortage is boosting demand for autonomous tech in those machines.

We covered the market outlook for autonomous and electric mining equipment earlier this summer, and I posted an episode exploring the growing demand for electric equipment on an episode of Quick Charge I’ve embedded, below. Check it out, then let us know what you think of the future of electric mining in the comments.