Mexico Urges Carbon Offsets Regulation as Investigation Exposes BP Underpricing

The president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has called for a regulation of the country’s carbon offset market after an investigation outed BP Plc for lowballing subsistence farmers.
The Bloomberg Green investigation stated that the oil giant paid a meagre $4 per tonne to over a dozen Mexican communities under an agreement signed in 2021. On the flipside, the research discovered that the offsets were worth as much as $16 on the market. Obrador
told a press conference that his government would look into the project and why BP paid “too little,” according to Bloomberg.

Mexican government officials reportedly confronted carbon offset standards bodies, calling for a “just distribution of benefits.” The community members in the region, Coatitila, challenged one of the program’s contractors after which BP informed the communities through the contractors that their pay would be increased. Pronatura, a Mexican environmental non-profit which runs the project for BP was quoted as saying that they will be using a model where the oil giant would take a cut of the market rate and the rest goes to the community.

BP released a statement saying: “Our intention is to create conditions that help landowners to generate income through the protection, restoration and sustainable management of forests.” The company admitted that sequel to its signed contracts in 2021, prices had rose
and committed to restructuring its payment mechanism to ensure fair remuneration to the communities.