Global Energy Roundup: Solar Costs Hit Record Low, BP Exits North Sea

Solar power is now the cheapest form of energy in history, according to an analysis cited by OilPrice.com. However, the same report notes a widespread political retreat from clean energy commitments across multiple U.S. states, including New York and California, driven by high energy costs and federal policy headwinds.

In the oil and gas sector, major producer BP is considering a sale of its entire UK upstream portfolio, which could fetch around £2 billion ($2.7 billion), according to OilPrice.com. Talks with Ithaca Energy fell through earlier in June 2026. Rystad Energy, cited in the report, views this as part of BP's strategic shift to regions with greater growth potential than the mature North Sea, where no exploration wells were drilled in 2025 for the first time since 1964. The move would help BP reach its $20 billion divestment target by the end of 2027.

BP's exploration focus has pivoted aggressively since a strategy reset in early 2025, OilPrice.com reported. The company has since discovered about 2.7 billion barrels of oil equivalent in recoverable resources net to BP, including the giant Bumerangue find in Brazil. New CEO Meg O’Neill has set a target to raise BP’s reserve replacement ratio to 100% by 2027, up from around 76% currently.

In advanced energy sectors, lunar helium-3 mining remains non-competitive with Earth-based sources, OilPrice.com reported in a separate analysis. The cost to extract helium-3 from lunar regolith is orders of magnitude higher than sourcing it from terrestrial helium wells or tritium decay from nuclear stockpiles. While lunar sources have high theoretical scalability, their accessibility is currently "very low," with no existing mining or return logistics from the Moon.

The political landscape for clean energy in the U.S. is becoming more complex, OilPrice.com reported. Almost fifty percent of the U.S. population lives in a locality that enacted a clean energy commitment in the early 2020s, but many are now "walking those commitments back." New York, for example, recently moved its binding target for a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2030 to 2040.

For Bakken operators, the global movements highlight contrasting pressures: record-cheap renewable power coexists with political rollbacks, while international majors like BP reallocate capital from mature basins to high-growth exploration frontiers. The continued infeasibility of futuristic extraction projects like lunar mining underscores the enduring dominance of conventional, earth-bound energy economics.