Open Letter to Bernard Looney, “You’d better mean it”

Within days of Bernard Looney arriving at the CEO’s office of BP he has issued a statement that he knows he cannot be called on – get to net zero by 2050. His tenure is likely to be just 10 years, 15 at the most and yet he is making a promise for 30 years, twice that amount of time. First let’s look at the pressures he is under. His entire career has been spent working oil upstream. He has no working knowledge of retail, go to market, R&D or business transition. He has lived entirely in a world where buccaneering exploration, which knows no boundaries, is rewarded purely on success. So he has no skills where the world perceives…