Bernard Looney, the incoming chief executive of BP, has spent the past few months letting critics tell him how terrible his company is. Concerned that the energy major had become too insular in the aftermath of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the BP lifer deliberately set out to gauge what the outside world thinks. His meetings with investors, environmental activists and journalists ahead of starting the job next month come amid a growing backlash against energy companies for inaction on climate change. BP in particular has been targeted by campaigns against its arts sponsorship and by shareholders calling for greater disclosures around carbon emissions.
BP’s board believed the company needs to shift gears, and Mr Looney has already been taking a different tone. “I know a lot of people have views on oil and gas companies and our role in the energy transition,” he wrote on Thursday in a new Instagram account that shows him casually dressed in blue jeans. “I would like to use this platform to talk openly about that and explain the role BP can play, as I believe we share the same concerns and hopes.” Fifteen years younger than his predecessor, the 49-year-old Irishman is expected to bring a more agile, modern leadership style at a time when BP’s staff includes a growing cohort of millennial data scientists as well oil drillers in hard hats. Tall and tanned, he has a 20-something-year-old reverse mentor and talks about the need to challenge old habits to run a better business.
“The problem that we have is that people have been working a certain way and believe that answer that they’ve got is right,” he said before his selection. Although Mr Looney’s background is in BP’s traditional oil business – a giant picture of the Thunder Horse rig dominates his St James’s Square office – the board sees his views on the future energy system as “progressive”.
His selection is an opportunity to reposition the company after a feisty annual general meeting when shareholders overwhelmingly backed a resolution on better climate disclosures. “BP doesn’t want a repeat of the AGM from last year, which was a total disaster, where the company’s leadership looked at odds with core investors,” says one person briefed on the matter. Mr Looney says he wants to be “ambitious” about confronting a global shift towards cleaner fuels by going beyond small, ineffectual bets on low carbon investments. Yet he also wants to inject “realism” into the debate,