Complaint
The programme and associated online articles reported on concerns arising from the award of concessions for two oil and gas fields off the coast of Senegal, and the recipient’s sale of these concessions several years later to BP and another company.Ìý BP complained that the claims made in these items were inaccurate in a number of respects.
Outcome
The ECU found a breach of the Â鶹ԼÅÄ’s standards of due accuracy only in the programme’s statement that the recipient stood to receive “between 9 and 12 billion dollars†from BP (reflected as $10bn in its title, and also reflected in the associated online items, to which clarifications were added independently of the ECU’s involvement). The ECU accepted Panorama’s argument that this was an estimate based on reasonable projections from relevant data available at the time the agreement was made in 2017. However, the estimate was presented with a degree of certainty which was not justified, bearing in mind that the royalty payments would depend on a number of important variables, such as the changing price of oil and gas and the yield from the two fields over their lifetime.
Partly upheld
Further action
The team has been reminded to exercise an appropriate degree of caution in presenting financial projections.Ìý