"Well, big green agendas need to be financed. And if your current business throws up less profit, you have less money to invest."

That's Cornelia Meyer, an energy market analyst, who CGTN Europe interviewed about today's top story – that oil giant BP has downgraded its forecast of the oil price, and consequently how much its assets are worth. 

Despite recently setting out a new "green" mission statement, as Cornelia pointed out, with less money coming in, these big, bold plans may have to be implemented slower than was first planned. 

You can read the full interview below. 

Elsewhere, in the UK it was a shopper's delight as many retailers opened their doors for the first time in nearly three months. Non-essential shops, such as clothing stores, were not allowed to open previously under lockdown rules – and shoppers will still have to abide by social-distancing regulations.

And in Brazil there's good news for tech fans, as Facebook's WhatsApp rolled out its digital payments platform in the country. Users will now be able to send cash to their contacts as easily as sending a selfie. 

Finally, have you noticed more electric charging points near where you live? Today's graph shows where the majority of the "fast-charging" points have been built – and the answer might surprise you.

Happy reading, 

Patrick Atack

Digital business correspondent 

P.S. Did you know we send this briefing by email, too? 

You can sign up to receive it here.

Oil major BP has cut its price forecasts by as much as 30 percent, due to a long-term drop in demand as governments push for a change to renewable energy sources. A result of the changed forecast is a reappraisal of the value of the company's assets – by between $13 billion and $17.5 billion.

International furniture store Ikea said it will repay the salaries governments around the world have paid to the Swedish company's furloughed workforce. The governments it will now pay back, are: Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, Ireland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Spain and the U.S.

The finance minister of Indonesia has said the government is the "only player in town" as she confirmed the country would continue on its historic "quantitative easing" path, as the private sector continues to shrink due to the pandemic.

The top economic adviser at the White House has said unemployment aid payments of $600 should stop in July as the Federal safety net is a "disincentive" for workers. Larry Kudlow made the remarks as the House of Representatives passed a bill to extend the unemployment payments and other measures, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to hear the Bill. 

In the UK, "non-essential" shops reopened for the first time since March today and shoppers showed their eagerness to spend in-person again, with lines forming outside popular stores in several cities before opening time. 

EasyJet also returned to Europe's skies today, with new rules including the requirement to wear face coverings onboard. The first flight set off at 06:00 from London Gatwick to Glasgow in Scotland. 

India's Tata Motors forecast a loss of $1.3 billion in the second quarter, as it announced it would review all its businesses to attempt to find $789 million in savings to minimize damage from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

WhatsApp, the online messaging tool owned by Facebook, has rolled out its mobile payment service for Brazilian users. It allows payments to individuals or small businesses, by attaching the money to a message just like users would share a photograph or voice recording. 

Germany is set to increase its payments to the EU by 42 percent over the next seven years, according to newspaper Die Welt, which cited government figures. The rise of $14.6 billion is in line with Brussels' proposition that member states pay 1.075 percent of their gross domestic product. 

Chinese internet giant Tencent has acquired 10.4 percent of Warner Music through its subsidiary Tencent Music Entertainment. Two months earlier, the firm purchased a 10 percent stake in another U.S. music label, Universal Music. 

Video

British universities could attract more Chinese students as it becomes harder for some of them to study in the U.S.

On 29 May, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an order banning visas for postgraduate students and researchers from China with alleged links to the country's military.

Cornelia Meyer, CEO of Meyer Resources, told CGTN Europe how she expects BP and other oil majors to continue with their climate-change goals, despite the pandemic's effect on oil prices.

Let's talk about BP, because when the new CEO took over there was a lot of excitement about how he was going to reshape the company in line with their climate change ambitions. How has COVID-19, derailed that? 

Well, I don't think it has derailed the plan ... It has made them more cash poor. It has made all oil companies more cash poor. But they still adhere to these plans to be climate neutral by or emissions neutral by 2050. And let's not forget, BP is the company that under Lord Browne in the late 1990s, early 2000s, was the company that said it stood not for British Petroleum, but for Beyond Petroleum. This climate-change agenda is in the company's DNA. 

How green is BP? 

Well, look, it is as green as the other European majors and when you look at it, most of the European majors just beat Total, beat Shell, beat the Norwegian state oil company. Those four actually all have a very aggressive climate change agenda and energy transition agenda. 

And they're ramping up their investing in solar. They're investing in wind. They're looking at carbon capture and storage or carbon capture usage and storage. 

So they're doing all the right things. But, you know, energy transition is a big, big issue and it's not happening overnight. But the European oil companies are on it. 

Now with COVID-19, what happened is the oil price went so low and demand is probably not going to recover until, you know, the end of 2021, 2022. For oil, it may be even longer until we get there. So they have less cash at hand now with these low oil prices to invest in that energy transition agenda. 

What's the impact for all of these oil companies with big green ambitions, big green agendas?

Well, big green agendas need to be financed. And if your current business throws up less profit, you have less money to invest – look at all of the oil majors and even the big national oil companies ... the lowest that they've cut capital expenditure expenditure is 25 percent. So these companies are not investing because they're running at bare bones. BP is about to lay off about 10,000 people. So these are big, big, hard cuts that are coming their way. 

BP also had to write off an extraordinary amount of money in terms of the sector. Who's next? 

Well, what they've done is they have written down some of their assets in light of where they see oil prices going. Because, obviously, when you look at discounted cash flows of what you can get from an asset if the unit price goes down, you will get less. So they have taken the precaution to write down $17.5 billion, which makes their debt-to-asset ratio up to about 50 percent, which is very high. Other companies will follow but if they'll do with that publicly, I don't know. BP came out very publicly, which frankly surprised me.

Can we expect more of the same from companies like Exxon? 

I think maybe less so. Yes, you can expect some of it. But I think they've been doing these things more quietly. And with Exxon, and you look at it, the European companies, they are moving very aggressively on this energy transition agenda. The U.S. companies less so, Exxon actually the least. The big issue for Exxon is they have made huge investments in shale properties. And as we all know, shale has a higher cost of production. So they are hurting [and] that part of the business is hurting even more. So, yes, we will see a lot of shale companies actually go bankrupt. Obviously not Exxon, because that's only part of what they do. But they will have to adjust. And, look, these are hard times for any big oil company.