It must be around 20 or 25 years ago that BP rebranded itself: Beyond Petroleum. Remember?

People scratched their heads in puzzlement. What does it mean to be an oil refinery business producing petroleum and yet decide to leave that product behind? It didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t make sense.

The current CEO of BP was appointed last month. His predecessor was called Bernard Looney. Now this blog is not the place for cheap undergraduate humour making fun of names so cut out that smirk. However, Bernard does appear to have been, shall we say, born into the right surname?

Here is an extract from the BP investors website reporting on net zero progress. This document, dated March 2023, is still on the website but my guess is not for long. Check it out:

As I said, Bernard is no longer CEO.

The new CEO announced this week the write down of BP’s offshore wind farm business by over US$1b and plans to ramp up investment in oil and gas production. That’s right: back to petroleum. For 20 years or so BP has been wasting money in pointless renewable puffery and allowing its genuine assets to wither. It now has to catch up to rival companies that did not go down the garden path with the fairies.

On the plus side, maybe board renewal, a new CEO, a return to sense and a big write off offers an opportunity for potential new shareholders. I suspect the Net Zero progress report document for 2024 will be quite a bit different from last year’s version.