THE oil giant BP has been accused of creative accounting after declaring a cut of 830m tons in its annual carbon dioxide emissions — roughly equivalent to the entire output of Britain and the Netherlands combined.

It has decided to exclude the oil, gas and chemicals it buys on world markets from its emission figures, and now takes responsibility only for the hydrocarbons it has itself extracted.

Until 2005, BP took responsibility for about 1.4 billion tons of CO2 in documents it filed with the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). However, in the latest documents filed to the CDP, covering 2006, BP revised its CO2 output downwards to 570m tons — an apparent decrease of 830m tons.

Britain’s total annual emissions of CO2 stand at just under 600m tons, while the Netherlands generates a further 214m tons.

“We were surprised,” said Paul Dickinson, co-ordinator of CDP, which compiles emissions data from large companies on behalf of 280 institutional investors.

“This huge change in the way greenhouse gases are reported illustrates the need to develop consistent accounting standards in this new area of public life.”

John Wells, BP’s vice-president for environment, who devised the new approach, said the old method had “overestimated the total greenhouse gases generated by BP. The old approach included all the oil and gas that we trade. It produced the wrong figure and should never have been used”.

Others disagree. Craig Bennett, Friends of the Earth’s senior campaigner on corporate issues, said BP’s “creative accounting” reflected a much wider deception.

“BP has spent millions rebranding itself as ‘Beyond Petroleum’ and this is yet another piece of greenwash to improve their image,” he said. “In reality they are still investing billions in finding new sources of oil and gas that will accelerate the destruction of the climate.”

Richard Gledhill, head of the climate change team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm, said that the lack of agreed accounting standards meant that companies could change their procedures for measuring CO2 emissions at will.

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