BP

Today's decisions by oil giants BP and ConocoPhillips to pull out of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership along with equipment maker Caterpillar wiped some big names off the roster of the influential industry-environment partnership. But those moves also may give the group more freedom to take stronger positions as it lobbies Congress.

The first thing I noticed was that although we were just 20 miles south of where I started, the temperature was a good 15 degrees hotter.

The smells of tar and sulfur permeated the air. After a while, my eyes started to burn and itch.

I wasn’t in Nigeria or Iraq or Venezuela. My guide, Jesus Torres, otherwise known as JT, had taken me to Wilmington, Calif., in Los Angeles County, just 20 miles south of the L.A. beach town where I live.

Wilmington is home to 53,000 people – 45,000 of them Latino, 24 percent below the national poverty level – living in the midst of oil wells, oil refineries and the Port of Los Angeles. It was one of the stops on the Toxic Tour of Los Angeles that the organization, Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) leads. The group advocates around issues of environmental justice showcasing how our dependence on fossil fuels has impacted low income neighborhoods across the country.

Of the more than 2 million barrels of oil refined in California each day, 650,000 of them come from five refineries in the Wilmington area run by BP, ConocoPhillips, Tesoro and Valero.

London-based oil giant BP has announced that it has scrapped all plans to build wind farms and other renewable energy projects in Britain to concentrate on the US market instead. Said BP Spokesman Robert Wine, via Earth2Tech:

It’s a big place and it’s got a lot of wind.

Right. But that's not exactly news. America has long-boasted some of the world's best wind resources and greatest market potential.

The real spark for BP's latest investment switch?