He Spent His Whole Career - Decades - At BP Developing Vast Oil Projects, But New CEO "Green"

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Bernard Looney becomes BP’s new chief executive next month at a time of mounting public pressure to prevent a climate breakdown by phasing out fossil fuels. His career success has been built on the millions of barrels of oil that BP produces every day, but his tenure at the helm will be defined by his response to the climate crisis.

The dapper, 49-year-old Irishman has been hailed as a charismatic moderniser of the oil industry for the millennial generation. This week he launched an Instagram account to encourage a “candid” conversation about the energy transition. Many believe this unconventional oil man may be BP’s best hope of surviving the global shift from fossil fuels. Sources within the company say Looney was the natural frontrunner in the race to take over from Dudley. “It was no surprise to me whatsoever,” says one. “This is a business which needs to continue to deliver on its promises to shareholders, but must also evolve. The new leader will need to do both, and for many Bernard was the natural choice.”

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When Dudley took the reins in 2010 he promoted Looney to BP’s senior management team. Looney later became the global boss of “upstream” oil and gas production, where he was in charge of reigniting the company’s fossil fuel growth. Under his leadership BP produced 2.6 million barrels of oil and gas every day, and secured a series of multibillion-dollar investments that will pour millions more barrels into the global market in the years ahead.

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In an industry speech shortly before he was named as BP’s new boss, he told delegates: “We need to listen, hard, to society’s concerns. They are real concerns – the world is not on a sustainable path – and they are our concerns. Shouting louder about the good that we do is not a winning strategy. We need to demonstrate that we are part of the solution – that we get it.” He is reportedly poised to unveil the biggest strategic overhaul of the company’s century-long history. According to Reuters, the plan is to broaden BP’s carbon targets beyond the emissions it produces within its operations to include the emissions from the product it sells to customers.

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jan/25/bp-bernard-looney-new-charismatic-oil-man-climate-crisis