Johnette Alter

It all started with a conversation on a flight to New York a few weeks after September 11, 2001.

My husband and I had resolved finally to take that long dreamt of trip to Italy to mark a significant birthday. Like so many unrealized plans, for so many, it was put on hold due to Covid. Instead, I plunged my time and money into a new endeavor from the relative safety of my office, Seth Godin’s altMBA program.

If you’ve ever listened to his podcast, Akimbo, you’ve heard the testimonial ad:

“…What altMBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s good; you got access ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome but when you gonna show up? When are you gonna face that blank page? When are you going to face the possibilities within you? When are you going to face those fears? I’m not going to let you hide. You gotta show up. And that’s the hardest part. And it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. It’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question.

It’s not because we don’t know or don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up is possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories I see out there but I can show up.

Then Seth comes in and gently whispers, “Consider the altMBA.”

Travel is for me an exercise in expansion. Prior to leaving I start the trip at home by reading history books, dusting off my knowledge of art collections on offer, studying maps and preparing to eat and explore adventurously. In short, priming myself for intellectual and hopefully spiritual change in the baptismal of people and culture not of my own.

Once the trip was canceled, I turned to the altMBA as my change catalyst. Best decision ever, it’s the easy answer to what good came out of this year? And for me, the clear winner of the Silver Lining Award of 2020. The experience has transformed a year of pain and challenge to one of beauty, growth, possibility and connection.

This substantial blog post was written for an altMBA assignment or “prompt” as it was called in the program. The brief was to analyze Assets, Boundaries and Narratives at play in a company or organization unraveling how their interplay has lead to or will lead to success or decline.

Seth defined them as follows:

· Assets are productive tools, things we can use again and again.

· Boundaries are things we can’t, won’t or shouldn’t do.

· Narrative is the story we tell ourselves, a story about boundaries, about assets and about potential.

Assets come in two main flavors tangible and intangible. Tangible assets are physical like machinery, computers, buildings, land, minerals, inventory on hand, the things used to make a product or service.

The intangible assets, which have just as much or more value in their potential for future development, are non-physical like brands, patents, copyrights, perception and intellectual capital.

The analysis that follows of British Petroleum turned out not to be dry. It has the contours of a sporting match with the underdogs entering the field surprised to find themselves in the arena at all. Instead of becoming obsolete, the players involved stand poised to realize a historic transformation on par with converting a turn of the last century buggy whip manufacturer into a transportation mega company.

Photo: Hawaii Digital Newspaper Program UH Manoa Library

BP dances up to the edge but falls mid-pirouette. The hardened narrative that defines our possibilities kept them in a box of their own making. Like so many of us, we are limited by the framing we cannot or refuse to see.

It all started with a conversation on a flight to New York a few weeks after September 11, 2001. It was remarkable not because it occurred on a flight that would soon pass over ground zero, which at the time conjured up the image of a painfully extracted molar, but notable instead due to the stranger whom I sat next to, a BP executive.

Ground Zero, New York City. October 26, 2001. Photo: Rob Sheridan

In 2000, the oil company previously known as British Petroleum, made the audacious decision to rebrand itself as BP, coyly referencing not British in their new slogan but “Beyond Petroleum”. The implication of the $200 million-dollar rebranding effort was that this was a new type of oil company, one you could trust with the environment, with your future. An oil company that would acknowledge the realities of climate change and face them head on. Their new logo sealed the impression with a happy flower motif bursting yellow at its center giving way to two lovely variations of green petals, or sun rays. Ah, just makes me think of… oil.

BP British Petroleum Gas Station Sign, May 2014. Photo: JeepersMedia

At the time, I was excited to learn that my aisle mate was with BP. Their new ad campaign had caught my attention. I was eager to learn were they really going to invest and transition into clean energy as implied.

I honestly don’t remember his exact answer. I do remember the gist of it. He conveyed with maximum confidence that the plan was in fact to become the first global oil producer to voluntarily move some of its assets, increasing over time, into renewables. With the world feeling pretty bleak at that moment, it sounded like a piece of welcome good news. Climate Change has been a focused worry, bordering on obsession for me for a good long while.

So, what about BP and their assets? Did they live up to the intent of their $200 million-dollar investment in rebranding. Did the culture match the face of BP? What worldview led to the decision? Has it worked out?

During that in-flight conversation I remember referencing Lord John Browne, the Chief Executive at BP that led the push to change the public opinion of big oil. He seemed impressive, a Lord and the first top oil company executive to acknowledge Climate Change publicly. That’s right, the first! You can watch it yourself here. He had made an impression on me and I asked the BP Executive if Browne intended to lead it to completion. Which again I vaguely recall as “you betcha.”

Well, it didn’t go as planned. Or did it?

It was at Stanford University in 1997, Browne roiled his oil industry peers with a shocking speech saying, “Only a fraction of the total emissions come from the transportation sector - so the problem is not just caused by vehicles. Any response which is going to have a real impact has to look at all the sources.”

He added, “If we are to take responsibility for the future of our planet, then it falls to us to begin to take precautionary action now.”

And finally, “What we propose to do is substantial, real and measurable,” he assured his audience. “I believe it will make a difference.”

It was tantamount to a cigarette manufacturing executive coming out in the 1960’s to say, “Yep, these things cause cancer and from now on we’re transitioning into cancer research.”

Afterward, an unhappy oil industry official remarked that, Browne had “left the church.”

The timeline just prior to Lord Browne’s ascension into the Chief Executive role and from this point forward can only be described as epic, operatic, Shakespearean or better yet Wagnerian. I am going to take you on a trip through the choices and asset valuations of BP from this dynamic moment through to the present. It changed everything.

For each year, the total assets are indicated at the end of the section, based on the December 31 annual report. Data courtesy of YCharts.

1985 – British Petroleum was unfocused with businesses in minerals, coal, animal feed, and chicks (yes, baby chicks, crazy right?!) in addition to oil. Output from existing fields in the North Sea and Alaska were declining. New development/production costs were higher than competitors which led to difficulty making money on new fields.
Total Assets $30.54 billion

1987 – Under three CEOs, Peter Walter, Robert Horton, and David Simon; BP began taking a new direction, buying more assets through acquisition of Britoil and shares in Standard Oil. Shedding employees and consolidating operations.
Total Assets $26.87 billion

1995 – John Browne takes over as CEO after climbing through the ranks from an apprentice petroleum engineer. Continuing operational reductions and flattening the organizational chart.

Browne’s approach is a combination of Lean as demonstrated in this comment on how to simplify management structure, “A team of people focused on a coherent bit of a big, complex business can develop the kind of intimate knowledge of the business that’s needed to maximize performance and to create the options necessary for building the future. They can work the assets harder than a large organization can, and they’re much less likely to sit on those assets if they can’t be made to perform or don’t make sense. It’s a structure that allows people to have many face-to-face interactions and to form deep personal relationships, which are critical in a learning organization.”

And Theory of Constraint as shown by his reflection on how to approach strategic planning in a learning organization, “Given the uncertainty in the world, strategy cannot be about gambling on one possible outcome five or ten years down the road. Grand master plans have a habit of not being fulfilled. In my view, strategy is about buying the right options that will give us a shot at competing in the future—that will give us the right to play if we decide we want to when it becomes clearer what the game is about. To create the kind of distinctive asset base and market positions that allow one to outperform the competition and generate great returns requires a continuous process of developing strategic options, applying skills and technology to stretch their potential, and regularly winnowing them, choosing only the best.”
Total Assets $34.35 billion

1997 – Browne makes his ground-breaking speech at Stanford acknowledging the cause and effect between human activated carbon products and climate change. This action ultimately broke up the Global Climate Coalition, a group of fossil fuel corporations promoting climate change skepticism with $1.68 million in funding. Amidst the immediate fallout from the speech, BP withdrew from the group. Many were angry and wondered why he had dropped this bombshell on the industry?

There was speculation at the time as to whether John Browne was influenced by his good friend Prime Minister Tony Blair and the recent report released by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Or whether he was merely creating a goodwill shield to better position BP’s optics and throughput. I’m not sure which is true, but I suspect it was somewhere in the middle at the time.

Also that year, Browne continued to shed employees down from 129,000 in the previous decade, to 53,000 employees.
Total Assets $85.95 billion

1998 – Next, he led the takeover of Amoco, the largest acquisition of an American company by a foreign concern, for $48.2 billion, kicking off the era of big oil. Followed by Exxon acquiring Mobil for $73.7 billion, the largest merger in history at that time. The move expanded the exploration and petrochemical assets of BP.
Total Assets $84.92 billion

1999 - Back in 1981 BP began dabbling in solar with the acquisition of Lucas Energy Systems becoming Lucas BP Solar Systems. With the Amoco acquisition, BP got American Solarex as part of the deal. They made a bid to increase their ownership at a cost of $45 million to 100% by 1999 and renamed the group of solar holdings as BP Solar.
Total Assets $89.56 billion

2000 – BP launches their $200 million-dollar new brand. The logo, ”Named the Helios mark after the Greek sun god, the new logo signifies dynamic energy in all its forms from oil to gas and solar, said Sir John”, according to a Guardian article.

He went on to explain, “We are not an oil company. 40% of our hydrocarbon production comes from natural gas. We are aware the world wants less carbon-intensive fuels. What we want to do is create options.”

Not everyone was a believer, Rob Gueterbock, a climate energy specialist at Greenpeace, said “The company’s move was a triumph of style over substance. They spent more on the logo this year than they did on renewable energy last year. Given they spend $8 billion a year on oil exploration, BP stands less for beyond petroleum and more for burning the planet."

The major shopping spree continues with acquisition of three additional major assets: Atlantic Richfield (Arco) $27 billion, Burmah Castrol $4.7 billion and Vastar (natural gas) $1.5 billion. This year is the leap that kicked BP into another league as the previous acquisitions begin to pay off.
Total Assets $143.94 billion

2002 – Browne visits Stanford University once again. This time to proclaim victory, “The company’s emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have fallen to almost 80 million tonnes, 10 million tonnes below 1990 levels and 14 million tonnes below the level they had reached in 1998.

Browne went on to say, “I believe the American people expect a company like BP - the largest single supplier of oil and gas in this country - to offer answers and not excuses,” Browne concluded. “People expect successful companies to take on challenges, to apply skills and technology and to give them better choices. Well, we are ready to do our part - to reinvent the energy business, to stabilize our emissions - and, in doing so, to make a contribution to the challenge facing the world.”

BP however is investing 25 times more in oil and gas.
Total Assets $159.12 billion

2003 – BP invests $8 billion in TNK a Russian owned oil and gas company.
Total Assets $177.57 billion

2004 – My speculation is that the commitment to solar begins to soften with the sale of BP Solar’s R&D operation. Back in 1997, a few months after that titanic speech taking ownership for oil and carbon products causing climate change Browne gave a truly inspiring interview to the Harvard Business Review. The topic was leadership. I must say I’m going to hang on to this article. He waxes eloquently about his strategy for moving BP from a sleepy player in the oil and mineral market to one of the largest most profitable energy companies in the world. Many of the details reflect lessons from the altMBA program. It’s a fascinating look at the theories in practice.

The interviewer asks Browne, “Was a fuzzy purpose one of the root causes of your previous problems?” Browne replies, “In order to be in control of your destiny, you must realize that you will stay ahead competitively only if you acknowledge that no advantage and no success is ever permanent. The winners are those who keep moving. We have tried to instill this attitude in our people.”

And, “Now we also expect people, when they’re setting targets or challenging a boundary, to look beyond the oil industry to whichever industry does something best. For example, we’ve learned a lot from the automobile industry about procurement, which has helped us lower the cost of building service stations. And we went to the U.S. Army to learn about capturing and sharing knowledge.”

And earlier in the conversation, “This was the sort of innovation that people would come up with when we challenged them. And before too long, it became contagious. Without prodding, people began to ask themselves, where can I innovate? Or they would realize on their own, this isn’t a good idea—let’s try something different. So, contrary to what some may believe, you can institutionalize breakthrough thinking.”

It appears that BP has broken the self-imposed boundaries centered on the question, what business are we really in? Culture, management choices, and a dab of chance would soon cement a direction that remained within the four corners of industry traditionalists.
Total Assets $194.63 billion

2005 – BP commits to investing $8 billion in renewable energy by 2015.

The Lean and Theory of Constraint measures begin to take a toll on operations. With the Amoco merger came the Texas City refinery which was badly in need of repair. Part of BP’s successful throughput strategy has been wringing all the value from their assets.

According to ProPublica: Several safety inspections revealed critical and worsening problems, but improvements would not allow them to meet the revenue targets. Reductions were called for instead, among the reductions at Texas City:
• Cut inspectors and maintenance workers by the dozens to save just over $1 million.
• Eliminate safety calendars: $40,000 in savings.
• Reduce purchases of safety shoes for employees: $50,000 in savings.
• Eliminate safety awards: $75,000 in savings.

On March 23, 2005, a series of equipment and operating failures caused one of the worst refinery accidents in history. 15 people were killed and 180 injured. Check out this heavy video recreating the blast and reporting on the causes here.

The ProPublica article further reported:

After the Texas City explosion, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP $21 million. The company also agreed to a $50 million plea bargain with the U.S. Department of Justice, in which it promised to comply with the improvements OSHA required.

The string of investigations that were conducted after the blast cited cost cutting and poor maintenance as contributing factors.

The Chemical Safety Board found that “budget cuts and production pressures seriously impacted safe operations at Texas City” and that BP executives “failed to provide effective leadership and oversight to control major accident risk.”
Total Assets $206.91 billion

2006 – Massive oil leak in Alaska. More fallout from the Lean approach to asset management.
Total Assets $207.09 billion

2007 – Lord Browne entered the spotlight one last time at the helm of BP to announce the expenditure of $1.7 billion more in safety measures each year, for the next four years. The 2005 blast, he said, “was a watershed, and it would forever change BP. That remains true.”

Just a few weeks later he suddenly resigned due to a tabloid scandal revealing a sexual relationship with a male companion. Though he had already been forced into taking early retirement due to the massive losses caused by BP’s poor safety record and the recent Texas City refinery explosion. The resignation would cost him $30 million in retirement and stock benefits.

Tony Hayward was appointed CEO.

Though Texas City faded from the media’s attention, it continued to have pollution and safety issues.

Jordan Barab, assistant secretary of labor for OSHA, told ProPublica. “I’ve often said before that we think the company as a whole has a systemic safety and health problem throughout its facilities.”
Total Assets $216.86 billion

2008 – Total Assets $228.24 billion

2010 – Five years later, BP had not learned from that painful lesson in Texas City, the effort to “wring every profit from their assets” and cut costs led to the largest environmental disaster in American history, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Though Browne was no longer with BP his words echo back eerily from his 1997 Harvard Business Review interview, “The wonderful thing about knowledge is that it is relatively inexpensive to replicate if you can capture it. Most activities or tasks are not onetime events. Whether it’s drilling a well or conducting a transaction at a service station, we do the same things repeatedly. Our philosophy is fairly simple: Every time we do something again, we should do it better than the last time. This year, drilling will account for more than half of our $3.8 billion in capital expenditures on exploration and production. We drill lots of wells. If we drill each well more efficiently than the last one, we can make a lot more money—which is exactly what we’re trying to do.”

And, “We haven’t been at it too long, but already we’re reaping fantastic gains. Deepwater drilling is a good example. We have a big acreage position in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling is an enormous technical challenge. The water there is between 2,000 and 8,000 feet deep, and then you have to drill 7,000 to 12,000 feet below the seabed to reach hydrocarbons. Because the water is so deep, you can’t affix anything to the seabed, and no human being can go down that far. So, you have to use special vessels to drill. They are very expensive, and because it’s fashionable to be drilling in this area, they’re becoming even more expensive. In 1995, we spent 100 days on average drilling deepwater wells. We now spend 42. How did we do it? By asking every time we drilled a deep-water well, what did we learn the last time and how do we apply it the next time? And we learned not only from our own people but also from contractors and from partners such as Shell.”

On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded killing 11 workers and dumping an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the waters off Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. Photo: U.S. Coast Guard

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

The oil well over which it was positioned was located on the seabed 4,993 feet (1,522 metres) below the surface and extended approximately 18,000 feet (5,486 metres) into the rock. On the night of the accident a surge of natural gas blasted through a concrete core recently installed by contractor Halliburton in order to seal the well for later use. It later emerged through documents released by Wikileaks that a similar incident had occurred on a BP-owned rig in the Caspian Sea in September 2008.

Fishery Closure Boundary as of June 21, 2010 due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, extending from Atchafalaya Bay, Louisiana to Panama City, Florida. Map: U. S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

For 87 long days, the oil gushed into the one of the most biodiverse marine habit’s on Earth and millions of marine mammals, whales, sea turtles, birds, fish and decades to hundreds of year-old corral lost their lives. 10 years after the spill the slow rolling tragedy is still impacting marine life.

Dr. Brian Stacy, NOAA veterinarian, prepares to clean an oiled Kemp's Ridley turtle, June 2010. Photo: NOAA's National Ocean Service

According to research shared in National Geographic:

Dolphins have been hit hard. Losing 1000 immediately after the spill, they have continued to decline with reproductive failures, lung disease, heart issues and impaired stress response and death. Scientists have also found that workers that helped in the cleanup are experiencing the same symptoms and health problems as the dolphins. It was summed up nicely by Cynthia Smith, a veterinarian at the National Marine Mammal Foundation, “You don’t necessarily think of a dolphin as being representative of yourself or a human being representative of a dolphin, but our lives overlap,” Smith says. “We’re in this space together, and there’s a lot to learn from that.”

Health, safety and environment (HSE) workers contracted by BP clean up oil on a beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 23, 2010. Photo: United States Coast Guard — Health, safety and environment (HSE) workers contracted by BP clean up oil on a beach in Port Fourchon, La., May 23, 2010. Photo: United States Coast Guard

BP Chief Executive, Tony Hayward, didn’t last the year stoking the fire of angry American sentiment while testifying before the U. S. Congress about the spill with stonewalling and insensitivity. Some thought his leadership incompetent, he remarked at one point, “No one wants this over more than I do, I’d like my life back”.

As of today, BP has spent $65 billion on the cleanup. At that time the cost was already hitting $4 billion within 3 months of the spill. Plus they committed to set aside another $20 billion for further cleanup and compensation going forward. The process of selling assets began, to pay the enormous tab.

During the crisis other oil companies threw BP under the bus as the one bad actor among the other well-behaved oil companies. BP hadn’t been forgiven yet, they were still paying the price for Browne’s admission that their product causes Climate Change.

By October his successor, American, Robert Dudley, a long-time employee of BP, who also came up through the ranks, had taken over as CEO.
Total Assets $272.26 billion

2011 - BP divests all of their solar assets to focus on wind and biofuels and surprisingly is still committed to meeting the 2005 target for investing $8 billion in renewables.
Total Assets $293.07 billion

2013 – After a rocky operational relationship with TNK including billion-dollar back tax claims out of nowhere and Soviet-era KGB searches, plus ejecting then group executive, now CEO Robert Dudley, from the country; BP sells its 50% stake to Rosneft, a Russian state-owned oil firm for $26.7 billion. The dividends over that 10-year period were $19 billion, a 472% return on investment. Not bad!

This is it, BP’s peak year for asset valuations. It begins from this point to hover and move slightly up but for the most part the trajectory is stagnant or down.

BP has another bit of good news, it finally reaches its $8 billion-dollar target expenditure in renewables and then promptly dumps them the following year.
Total Assets $305.69 billion

2014 – BP disposes of all renewable assets except biofuel including $3.1 billion in wind farms and rights for future development. It looks as though the John Browne gambit of keeping pieces on the board for an as yet seen play has been retired.
Total Assets $284.30 billion

2018 – Ultimately BP sold off $75 billion in assets to pay for the Deepwater Horizon disaster cleanup costs and facility improvements.

They became a smaller and more focused company as a result, according to CEO Robert Dudley.

Most of BP’s projects through the end of the decade would be natural gas, which would rise to 60 percent of BP’s fossil fuel production. BP also doubled down on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. They were among the first in line to win new leases to drill again in the gulf once the U.S. government restrictions were lifted.

“This is not a race to renewables. It has to be a race to reduce emissions,” Dudley said.

It’s clear by now that the culture at BP is not committed to the broader framing of energy production but more specifically, fossil fuel energy production.
Total Assets $282.18 billion

2019 – In May, BP finally agreed to a request from shareholders for details and transparency on how the company would meet Paris climate agreement carbon emission reductions. As a result, the company agreed to sell a handful of its most carbon-intensive projects, a surprising development.
Total Assets $295.19 billion

2020 - CEO Robert Dudley steps down due to poor earnings after nearly a decade on the job saying of his predecessor, “Bernard (Looney) is a terrific choice to lead the company next. He knows BP and our industry as well as anyone but is creative and not bound by traditional ways of working. I have no doubt that he will thoughtfully lead BP through the transition to a low carbon future.”
Totals Assets as of September $260.25 billion

And here we are full circle, once again not bound by traditional ways. This time however it’s not so much a choice. Banks and insurance companies have been warily eyeing the future of the fossil fuel industry. They are beginning to see funding exploration as a growing risk.

When the price of oil fell dramatically in May from the steep decline in usage due to Covid-19, a supply glut preceding the pandemic and OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, refusing to cut production; we got a glimpse into the future of oil. A tsunami of forces that brought the price crashing to $15 per barrel, a price not seen since 1999. A party for the consumer but not the oil producers.

This is a peak behind the curtain for what we may expect if, when big oil’s assets become stranded by the conversion to renewables. The spoiler is they won’t be worth the cost of extraction.

Carbon Tracker explains it this way:
“Stranded assets are now generally accepted to be those assets that at some time prior to the end of their economic life (as assumed at the investment decision point), are no longer able to earn an economic return (i.e. meet the company’s internal rate of return), as a result of changes associated with the transition to a low-carbon economy (lower than anticipated demand/prices). Or, in simple terms, assets that turn out to be worth less than expected as a result of changes associated with the energy transition.

For existing assets, our research can highlight those assets which are most at risk of becoming stranded through the energy transition, as society looks to restrict global warming to well below 2°C, as under the Paris Agreement. There are already examples of coal mines, coal and gas power plants, and other hydrocarbon reserves which have become stranded by the low carbon transition.”

So here we are at the end of a very, very long journey both in the history of energy production globally but also this assignment which I had initially anticipated would be brief.

I began this analysis not understanding the depth and maze of the rabbit hole in which I had fallen. I will admit, I began writing Tuesday and stayed at it late into the night. I picked up where I left off Wednesday morning and ran right through again into the wee hours of Thursday morning, to be precise 6:23 am.

I couldn’t stop pressing forward to find out how this rollicking story of vision, tragedy, and retrenched conventional culture would end. I have learned more from this assignment than an I ever dreamed possible by taking this excessively long look at BP. I can honestly say I admire their tenacity (and certainly John Browne’s audacity), despite the fact that in my outsider’s judgement they missed a much richer, more generous story arc and future asset base.

My perspective at the outset, once I had that conversation on the plane many years ago, is that BP has - over the years since John Browne, flaming sword in hand, declared he would set the world free from the burden of oil industry induced climate change - wrongly framed its potential. I couldn’t resist that visual reference to the fiery other, American abolitionist John Brown, with no ‘e’.

John Brown Mural, Tragic Prelude (unsigned, 1940 ), Kansas State Capitol Building, Courtesy Quintard Taylor Collection — John Brown Mural, *Tragic Prelude* (unsigned, 1940 ), Kansas State Capitol Building, Courtesy Quintard Taylor Collection

When I consider the many chances BP missed to become THE preeminent world leader in the generation of global energy supply, it’s stupefying. They kept pushing back on the framing that would have put them out in front.

The worldview of the good-ole leadership at BP served them well at keeping the assets growing but at what price? They knew what they knew. Each preceding CEO was from within the ranks and came up most likely loving what they did, oil and gas energy production for the world.

Changing that culture may not have even been an option. They simply couldn’t see past the powerful sway of what had worked and making it as profitable as possible at all costs including human life. In a report from the year 2000, for a cost benefit risk analysis, BP put a $10 million price tag on a single human life. They spent a great deal more.

I will be watching them more closely from this point forward. There’s still a chance they could turn this around before it’s too late.

In August of this year, new CEO Bernard Looney made a bold announcement. BP is setting out once again to remake itself into a clean energy producer, and get this, within a decade! They are planning specific investments in wind, solar, hydrogen, and a clean-burning gas. Sound familiar? This is the really impressive part, with a renewables budget of $5 billion per year. Here’s the kicker that literally seals the deal, with a corollary 40% reduction in their oil and gas production within the same time frame. They’re not leaving themselves an opening to stay in the fossil fuel industry. They’re selling and converting their assets, it’s the real deal this time. Although I feel uneasy making such a declaration. Knock on wood.

BP’s share price jumped by more than 7 percent during trading after the strategy was revealed.

You may wonder what happened to the inestimable John Browne? Was he true in his desire to turn this titan of carbon pollution into the messiah of renewables? I don’t know but I can share that he did not remain in retirement. He is once again a chairman. According to the Washington Post in 2014 Browne took up the leadership of Cuadrilla Resources with the intent of fracking the English countryside. Caudrilla, incidentally, in Spanish describes the coterie that assists the matador in taking down the bull. You may wonder as I did, who is the bull in this scenario, the English countryside and its residents?

Protesters have dubbed Browne “the fracking czar”. He was quoted as saying, Shale gas could be very, very important for this country; it could be transformative.” “It’s like the opening of Alaska or western Siberia or the Gulf of Mexico.” It leaves one to feel that he might not have been entirely sincere in 1997.

Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and Lord Browne at the L1 Energy launch New York, May 2015. Photo: LetterOne Group

In a recent Guardian article reporting that Lord Browne had joined yet another oil enterprise L1 Energy which is controlled by Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman, he was asked what he would say to Greta Thunberg, the young Swedish Climate Change activist? His reply, “I would say that I have been at this for longer than you’ve been on the planet and that [decarbonisation] will take time. And so my proposal is this: remember that energy is a very big system and there is not one solution. We can’t have one magic bullet that will make the solution work for us. Because we will need coal, oil and gas, we need to do everything we can to decarbonise the emissions. This is critical for the future.”

Though the devil may be on one of John Browne’s shoulder’s, I still think he’s got a quiet angel on the other. It may be that since his untimely departure from BP he’s decided it’s just not worth listening to. And for him, maybe it never was.

Large oil companies, especially American producers that don’t have government pressure yet, may play it safe for a bit longer but my perspective is that BP is the one playing it safe, this time.

Sources:

https://carbontracker.org/terms/stranded-assets/

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/A-Third-Of-Fossil-Fuel-Assets-May-Soon-Be-Stranded.ht

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/growing-concern-over-stranded-assets

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/21/business/market-place-speculators-bp-and-sohio.html

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/

https://news.stanford.edu/news/1997/may21/bp.html

https://wamu.org/story/19/09/03/engineers-can-help-save-the-earth/

https://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/07/26/377141/index.htm

https://theecologist.org/2018/sep/28/what-happened-whenlord-browne-bp-boss-called-action-climate-change

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Global_Climate_Coalition

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/science/earth/24deny.html