BP, ConocoPhillips leave climate coalition

A lobby group focused on climate-change legislation is seeing its corporate membership numbers drop, which some analysts are calling another indication that Congress appears increasing unlikely to pass a climate change bill this year.

BP PLC and ConocoPhillips decided against renewing membership in the US Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of environmental groups and corporations targeted on building support for a national cap-and-trade program. BP and ConocoPhillips were among USCAP’s founding members in 2007.

Other large companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, remain in the coalition.

USCAP spokesman Tad Segar says there’s still momentum to get a climate change bill done. Some energy analysts are not so sure of that.

Raymond James & Associates Inc. said in a Feb. 17 industry brief that there is no realistic prospect of passing cap-and-trade in 2010, adding that attitudes in Washington are shifting “in the wake of the Climategate scandal and news that the UN climate panel made bogus claims about glacier melting, and perhaps also out of recognition that cap-and-trade is DOA in the US Senate.”