70: BP's Road to Rebuilding Trust with CEO Bernard Looney

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Transcript generated by AI. While we aim for accuracy, errors may still occur. Please refer to the episode’s audio for the definitive version

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Hello, and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivett-Carnac.

 

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Christiana Figueres: I'm Christiana Figueres.

 

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Paul Dickinson: And I'm Paul Dickinson.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: This week, we talk about the vanishing Arctic, the new hope for national climate ambition, and Facebook's move against climate misinformation. Plus, we speak to Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, and we have music from Gecko. Thanks for being here. Okay, friends, so this has been a very consequential week. It feels to me like all of the, you know, Christiana, you've often talked about this, the exponential curve of impact and the exponential curve of solutions. And it just feels like both are taking a massive acceleration this week. I mean, I don't know what's caught your eye, but you know, apart from the wildfires that we talked about last week, there's also, you know, very significant breaking down, particularly of the Arctic ice sheet that's been reported this week, which is really devastating in terms of its impact. But also, we've seen this week Ursula von der Leyen, the EU chief, step up with an increased commitment for 2030, which we all hope that she would do, 55% up from 40%. We've seen China indicate they could do a lot more, which is a big deal. There's positive signs coming from the UK as well. And Facebook's finally doing something about climate change. So Facebook on Monday launched a climate change information page in an effort to promote facts about climate change from trusted sources. A similar effort to what they did on COVID. But the attempt there is to actually highlight for people when what they're seeing on Facebook is not trustworthy. So both of these curves this week, so in evidence of accelerating, it's left me a little bit confused.

 

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Christiana Figueres: And Google, if I can jump in to continue that. And Google announced that its new goal is to operate 24-7 throughout the year on what they're calling carbon-free energy everywhere by 2030. So I've been trying to dig in to that. What does carbon-free energy everywhere mean? And it's not entirely clear, but it's exciting that they have taken on this commitment, really quite ambitious. They've been walking down the decarbonization path for a while. But actually, Tom, you've read my mind. Because when I was looking at all of the news from this week, exactly what came up for me was these two exponential curves. And it is increasingly obvious that we're on an exponential curve of destruction, which is very scary, very threatening, but also on an exponential curve of solutions, of corporate engagement, of country engagement, of financial sector engagement. And these two curves are like competing against each other. It used to look to me like they were competing against each other every month, then it went to every week. Now we're at every day. They are competing against each other every day. And if you step back from the specifics of the news, you really can see these forces trying to figure out which one is going to actually have primacy. And it is just an amazing... I almost feel like I'm in one of those children's films of the good guy and the bad guy fighting it out, out there on the streets. And you really don't know which one is going to win. It's actually... I'm sort of sitting on the edge of my chair about this.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Yeah, you might want to get an extension on the edge of your chair, to be honest with you. I mean, the US election... You know what I mean? Are you going to be like in the house next door or something? The US election is now about climate change. That came out last week. There was an exchange with Trump about it. And I mean, it would be better if it was not partisan, but it is great news that it's part of the debate. And the outcome will direct global trends. So much of the world is, as you said, Christiana, watching and waiting. And assuming Trump loses, that could be a huge global lesson for politicians and governments regarding the public appetite for action. So yeah, nail biting, all my fingernails, all my toenails, unfortunately, in jeopardy.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And one of the interesting things about it is how people feel about it, because we've talked before about the prevalence of this deep anxiety about this moment. And we didn't even mention the biodiversity figures and the heartbreaking David Attenborough documentary that came out this week about extinction and the accelerating elements of that. So in a way, I mean, looking at all of that and doing the research to identify that for this podcast, I kind of am not sure whether I'm feeling outraged or optimistic about this whole mixture of things, because there's so much happening in both directions. But what I think is that how people feel can often be an effect of where they're looking, because everything is happening at the same time.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, well, we've said quite often, right, that we're in the midst of a transition. And by definition, any transition always has elements of the past and elements of the future. And it very much depends on what color eyeglasses you put on to look at the transition. If you want to look for elements of the past, there they are. If you want to look for elements of the future, there they are. But I think, actually, the wiser stance is to look at both and realize that there is this amazing tension. And that those of us, of course, who are vested into the future are very much rallying for the kind of world that we would like. But the tug, the tug and the pull and the push right now is unbelievable, unbelievable. And rightly so, right? Because this is not just any transition. This is not... I've been speaking a lot to Impossible Foods people lately, but just to have the contrast, this is not about changing your diet. This is literally changing human behavior, human thinking, human activities, human endeavors, human investment, human everything. If we come out on the other side, and we have to, there's no doubt about that, we will look back, right? And say, how were we ever, how were we ever captured in that polluting, unhealthy, death-driving, right? Extinction-driving world, when all the time we could have accelerated the transition. We're not going to understand this. We're not going to understand how it took us so long.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Well, it's easy to understand, Christiana. I don't think you fully appreciate the role of shareholder primacy here. The thing is that it's necessary to maximize returns in the short term, and everything else is irrelevant. But the key thing, perhaps, is that, to be serious for a minute, the pandemic restrictions may not be fun, but they mean we are no longer dealing with an imaginary world. We have actually transformed our world, and of course, the decarbonized world doesn't look like the COVID world. But we are actually much better able to imagine a different future because we're in one.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. I think you're really right, Greg, Christiana. I mean, I think that it will be a little bit like people who stop smoking when they get out from under the addiction of that and they pass through it, then they think back to all the years that they smoked, and the terrible impact that it had, and it sort of feels like, what the hell was I doing? I think there'll be some collective feeling like that. But where better? I just want to give a bit of a background conversation here to the discussion we're about to have in a few minutes with the CEO of BP, Bernard Looney. Now, listeners, sometimes we have these pre-chats and we've already recorded the interview, and we're always honest with you about that. But we haven't spoken to him yet, so we're gearing up to talk to him in a little bit. BP is this perfect example of what we're talking about here, of the past and the present being present in everything that's unfolding at the moment. Of course, BP, one of the world's oil super majors, one of the companies most responsible for producing the hydrocarbons that has got us into this mess in the first place and a long history of blocking progress and extracting more oil. At the same time, BP this February said they would cut emissions to zero by 2050, including a 40% drop in oil and gas production by 2030. So that really is a genuine leadership position for an oil and gas company. So my question to you, Paul and Christiana, is how do we handle talking to Bernard? Is he, you know, how do we go at that? Is what he's done enough? Do we meet him where he is? What's our strategy?

 

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Christiana Figueres: I wouldn't be very interested in knowing, does he think it is enough? Because ultimately he will make this call, right? And he's a very new CEO. He's just been in the job for what, six months or so. And so it's actually very interesting that he made this incredibly bold move so early in his tenure, which means that he must have been thinking about this for a while.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: And he spent his whole career at BP, his the only place he's ever worked.

 

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Christiana Figueres: So he knows the beast from inside. And he must have been thinking about this and talking to colleagues under the previous CEO for quite a while. So I'm very interested in that process to understand how, when did he start thinking about this, what his timing for the announcement, does he have the BP engineers with him, is he having a huge internal fight? I mean, it is not easy to do what he did. It's not easy vis-a-vis his shareholders, although the market actually immediately reacted positively by upping the value of shares by almost 7% right after the announcement. But nonetheless, he didn't know that that was the way the market was going to react. And so very courageous vis-a-vis his shareholders, vis-a-vis his employees, his colleagues, and the world at large, because he is definitely stepping out from the herd, let's say. So, well, I am dying to have this conversation with him.

 

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Paul Dickinson: No, it's incredibly exciting. And I was goofing about earlier, Christiana, talking about shareholder primacy. But here's just like one amazing quote. He was asked by a stock analyst what this means. He says, we're not promising the world. We're promising 8% to 10%. And for those of us who've spent a little bit too long thinking about this kind of stuff, that is a deeply profound sentence. And Christiana, you said...

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Why is that a deeply profound sentence?

 

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Paul Dickinson: Because essentially seeking to get double digit returns, you know, way above 10%, maybe 15%, maybe 20% is the excuse for despoiling the earth.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Yeah. Okay, so we'll go and talk to him in a minute. And I completely agree with what you guys said. I mean, there could not be anyone who more embodies this messy attempt to take this imperfect situation that we have inherited and try to transform it into something different. And it's not going to be perfect, but let's try and get under the skin of how he thinks about it and what's going to be next.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Let's do it.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Bernard Looney.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Christiana?

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Here we go. Here we go.

 

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Christiana Figueres: What a delight to have you on Outrage and Optimism. As you might suspect, the name of this podcast basically shows that we feel that we need both outrage at what is still not happening on climate change, of which there are many issues that we're totally outraged about. But we also need optimism about what is happening and what more we can do. And who better to sit somewhere in the uncomfortable middle between those two than you? Could I start just reflecting that you have spent your entire professional career at BP, you have seen it go through many, many different cycles, many vision cycles, I should say. You were there when Lord Brown was there, when he brought the Beyond Petroleum Vision way back in the 1990s. You were there during Bob Dudley, who was brought in to sort out the deep water oil spill. And then you were announced as the new CEO in October of last year, you took over in February, and it seemed like you had barely taken over three seconds when you announced a climate strategy, and then now on the 4th of August, you went into much more details about cutting your oil and gas output by 40% over the next 10 years, reaching 50 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030, and many other details that are really ground breaking for an oil and gas company. Here's my question. For you to take on those very ambitious targets so soon, basically a few months after taking over, you could not possibly have considered the implications of those targets the moment that you got into the CEO seat. I am suspecting that you were pestering and festering on all of this while you were not CEO. So just wanted to invite you to reflect a little bit on, on what I call your festering and pestering time.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Well, thanks, Christiana and Tom and Paul. And thanks so much for having me on. It's a real privilege. And in answer to your question, I mean, I think throughout my career, I actually started in BP as a drilling engineer. So actually, my career was in extracting oil and gas. But I think throughout my career and as I got older, I guess I've always felt that I'm interested in what's happening in society and I guess in some ways, felt I was in touch with what society was thinking and doing around the world. And I think in the latter years, it became very clear to me, Christiana, that while society needed what we wanted, it's not obvious to me that they wanted what we had to offer. So they needed our product, but it wasn't clear to me that they necessarily wanted it. And in many ways, it just felt increasingly like what we were doing was sort of out of step with society. And I personally just don't think that's a very productive place or space to occupy when you're out of step with what society really, really wants, which of course is yes, reliable energy, yes, affordable energy, but increasingly cleaner energy. When I was announcing a job in October last year, I thought I'd better go and validate whether this hunch is actually real or not. And I went deliberately out to seek views from a wide cross-section of people from the UN, from NGOs, from activists, from investors.

 

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Christiana Figueres: I should say quite a few critics. You spoke to quite a few known, outrageous critics.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Absolutely. There is no point in talking to people who agree with you. I mean, it really, it might be very fun and comfortable in the moment, but I'm not sure you learn anything. And my mother, who is very important to me, told me I had two ears and one mouth and to use them in that proportion. So I think it is important. It is important to get out there and listen. And I really believe in listening. And I listened and there was one activist who has had a huge influence on me. And, you know, she was able to explain things to me in a way that made me, helped me understand why people didn't trust us, why people maybe didn't want what we had. They needed it, but they didn't want it. And I wouldn't have got that insight had I not gone and listened. So those, over a period of three or four months, that confirmed to me, it confirmed to me that we had to change as a company. We had to change because what society wanted from us was different. And secondly, what I learned from our employees and our organization is that they wanted us to change and we want. So it was it was a sort of we had to and we wanted to. We had tremendous skills to offer in this world. We believe we can contribute hugely, actually, to the transition. So it was a hunch. It was a deliberate sort of listening tour. Definitely don't talk to people who's going to agree with you. I basically think what's the point. So I went and talked to a lot of people who challenged me. That helped me. It confirmed what I thought. And that's why in February, it's actually seven days after I started in the job, we launched a new purpose because everything has to start with a purpose. What is it that we're actually about? And we've always been in the provision of energy. So the concept of people and planet has always been there. But we said we actually need to reimagine energy because energy is actually going to be different in the future and people want to. We're reimagining energy for people and the planet. That's our purpose. We then said that's not enough. We need an ambition. So we set a net zero ambition by 2050 or sooner if we can, and how we're going to help the world get there. We backed that up with 10 aims, which we are doing, five for BP and five to help the world. Then we said, well, people said we need more detail, which is great because I agree I was seven days in, so I didn't have all the answers, but we had set this sat nav. We had set Christiana the direction, and I kept saying to people, look, the direction is set, there's no going back now. Next, it's the milestones, and we've just launched our strategy on the 4th of August, and that is about how do we actually go from being an international oil company to being an integrated energy company.

 

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Christiana Figueres: So Bernard, can I push on that envelope a little bit more because I'm interested in your sense of both the timing of your recent announcements as well as the scale of the change, because I'm sure you're aware that there are many who on one side would say, you know what, this is way too late, it's way too little, it was necessary X number of years ago, the timing is totally wrong, why didn't they read the IPCC report X number of years ago, on and on and on. Then of course, there are some, and I would say there's a huge majority of people, at least those certainly within our reach and space, who would argue that. Then there are some who would say, you know what, totally premature. Bad timing, you should hold out more, you should really be able to confirm where the industry is going, not be a leader but rather be a follower, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a huge spectrum there in between. The same thing goes for the scale of the change. There are many who would say, well, you know, not enough. I mean, yeah, good cigar, but not quite there. If you're saying that you're going to put 40% of BP's overall capital spending budget into renewables, well, where's the other 60% going? Actually, if you're really, really clear about this, it should be 100% that is going in the right direction. And then of course, there are others who would be on the other side of that spectrum saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's way too quickly. So my question is, on that spectrum, both of which are interrelated, timing and scale, obviously, you have taken the timing of the decision that you think is best as well as the scale. Why do you think this is the appropriate timing? And why do you think this is the appropriate scale and not more? From my perspective, why not more?

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Well, I think, you know, we talk a lot here in BP about what I call ambitious realism. And what I want our strategy to be is to be at the ambitious edge of what is really possible. And what do I mean by that? We need to be ambitious for the world, for the stakeholders that we engage with, society, our shareholders and our employees. We want to be ambitious because, you know, there is a finite carbon budget, it is running out and we need action. So we are in action. Now, we need to be successful in doing in this endeavor. You know, we as a company, BP, can help the world in this transition. We have enormous skills that can add to what the world desperately needs. And therefore, we must make it work. And that's where the realism and the pragmatism comes in. You know, we have taken an incredible step of saying that we are going to reduce our production from oil and gas, our core business for 111 years, that we are going to reduce it by 40% in the next decade.

 

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Christiana Figueres: By 40%, yep.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): By 40%, that is actually an extraordinary step to take. Now, why not 100%? Well, you know, unfortunately, it's not that simple. For us to fund the transition, we have to be a viable company. We have to have cash flows. And those cash flows, whether people may not like this, but it is the truth and, you know, it is important to speak to the truth, so to speak. Those cash flows come from hydrocarbons. Therefore, we need those hydrocarbons business, not as much of it. We're going to make it a much smaller business, 40% smaller, but it will be the engine which funds the transition, which allows our company to scale up a 20-fold increase from 2.5 gigawatts to 50 gigawatts of renewable capacity, a 20-fold increase in charging points. We're going to go a 10-fold increase in investment. We can't turn a tap off overnight and turn it to zero and simply transition. It's just not possible. So we're doing the absolute best that we can, as quickly as we can, while acknowledging some realities. And of course, the reality is that the world still depends on oil and gas today. And I think it would also be wrong for us to turn off the tap from that perspective. So better that BP is doing it than someone else. So it's ambitious. I think it's incredibly ambitious. And I understand that people think it should be 100% in terms of we should completely be out of oil and gas tomorrow. But unfortunately, there are realities and practicalities. And at the end of the day, we are going to transition the company. To do that, we need the cash flows. And to do that, we need that hydrocarbon business at a scale that enables us to make that transition. That's what we're trying to do.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, understood. How much pushback did you get internally for this?

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Well, actually, you know, I remember talking recently, Christiana, to and it sounds like a story for TV, but it's actually the truth. And I was talking to some refinery workers in Toledo in the United States. And they called me up in the middle of COVID. And they said, they reached out to me and said, would you chat with us for a little bit? And, you know, everybody's doing Zoom calls and checking in. And I said, fine, let's have a chat. So we got on the phone. There was four or five of them. They've worked in the refinery probably all their lives, 28, 30, 35 years. And we had a chat for about 20 minutes about their jobs and what they're up to and all of that. And at the end of the conversation, this gentleman said to me, Joe Rodriguez is his name. Joe said, I want to thank you for what you're doing on the energy transition. And I thought to myself, well, that's interesting because Joe's working in a refinery. And one of the things we've said is that we'll probably do less refining. And he's probably wondering what that means for the future of his own career. And I said, well, thank you, Joe. I said, why do you say that? And he said, because the guys here will tell you, I love my grandchildren. And he said, given a choice, given a choice, I choose my grandchildren every time. And he said, what you're doing with the energy transition and the position that you've taken, he said, will help. It won't solve, but it will help create a better world for my grandchildren. And he said, I'm very happy for this refinery to provide the cash flows to enable you to make that transition. So I don't want to downplay the fact that there are people inside the company who are anxious about their future because they've spent their career in oil and gas. But nonetheless, the overwhelming sort of feedback and sentiment is that people, you know, we have great people working for BP. These are people who care. They have children, they have relations, they have grandparents, they have grandchildren. They want, they want what everyone listening to this, they're not different, they're not different people. They want the same thing. So to be part of a company that is doing what they think is the right thing for the world gives them enormous energy. And yes, there are concerns about what does it mean that we're reducing the oil and gas business? What does it mean that we're doing less refining? What does it mean for me personally in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst? This is a mental health crisis that we're dealing with at the moment. So this is very difficult. But there is energy at the same time from knowing that deep down what we are doing is, I think, the right thing for the world. And that story is probably the best example of that.

 

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Tom Rivett-Carnac: Bernard, I love that. And I love the way that you've just described what purpose does and how it motivates action. I know Paul wants to come in with a question, but just very quickly before we do, to what degree have you set out a plan where you're going to take your workforce with you on this transition? Because they might be quite different skills that the BP in 10 years' time needs than the BP of today. How's that going to work from a workforce perspective?

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Tom, I mean, here's the thing. Here is the thing, because a lot of people say, well, you've done an oil and gas for 111 years. What skills do you have in this new world? Really, like really. And the answer is far more than you would think. And I've thought long and hard about this, and we've had lots of debate about this. But, you know, if you want to do offshore wind, you need project management skills. And independent analysis, not me saying it, benchmarks BP as best in class in four out of five categories in project management. Our people can equally build offshore wind firms as they can build a refinery. We have people who, an example, we have someone who's working on a drilling site. We call them a well site leader. And one of my team was talking to those people once, and their job is to manage a drilling operation. They're logistics managers, they coordinate people, they do contract management. That's the type of thing that they do. And there was a debate, there was a discussion about, so what does the new strategy mean for us? Because we're well site leaders, we drill wells. And one of the guys said, well, actually, he said, I'm a well site leader today. Why can't I be a solar site leader tomorrow? Solar site leader. A great story. Somebody thinking, actually, my skills are transferable. We have reservoir engineers. We have geoscientists. They can work in carbon capture and storage. That is a part of the solution for the future. We will see how big a part, but it is a part. We have scientists. We have engineers. We market products. We're truly global. If you want to solve a global problem, we're in 70 to 80 countries around the world. We have 6,000 engineers. We have 2,500 scientists. There's actually a lot more skills relevance. Of course, there are things we don't have. Where we don't have them, we're hiring. We're hiring people. I can tell you right now that we're able to attract people to our company that we would not have imagined.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Wouldn't have imagined joining us.

 

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Christiana Figueres: I totally get that.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): By the way, partnerships. Partnerships. This week, we announced a partnership with Microsoft. You think Microsoft would want to work with us if we didn't have set out the strategy that we had given their ambition to be carbon negative by 2030?

 

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Christiana Figueres: Quick answer, no.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Uber has set out its strategy. We announced that ambition this week, that partnership with them in London. These people are coming towards us, wanting to work with us. We're having people, the biggest people reaching out to BP to join BP was the day after the 12th of February. I think we had 12,000 applicants on our online system for jobs.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Bernard, it's my job to leap in. And the reason I'm laughing so much is because I wrote a book in the year 2000 called Beautiful Corporations. You just basically explained to me why I think there is so much potential in the corporate system and how a company like BP literally can change the world. It's incredibly exciting. So I'm going to ask you a softball question, but I'm going to try and build you up to see if you will agree with something.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Okay, well, that's quite a setup.

 

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Christiana Figueres: Yeah, that was a setup.

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): You haven't made me nervous at all.

 

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Paul Dickinson: Okay, well, lawyers at the ready. You said in an analyst call recently, this is what you said. You said, we're not promising the world. We're promising 8% to 10%. Now, my question is this. How big a statement is that? And do you think it might have a role in resetting what companies are trying to achieve across the world and give them scope to better balance the interests of shareholders with those of the societies on which they depend? And you know, forgive me, but is what you said maybe a huge statement of kind of historic significance?

 

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Bernard Looney (guest, CEO of BP): Well, maybe and maybe not. I doubt I say anything of historic significance, to be honest with you. But what I would say is the point that I was trying to make is that there is this continual debate in the financial world that oil and gas is somehow very high returns and this new industry that we're pivoting into is low returns and therefore, is this a good use of shareholder capital? The point I was trying to make on the day is that actually, we think that the returns in the new sectors in renewable energy, we think we can actually make them better than what we would say as 8% to 10%. But what I don't want to do is promise that. I just want to give people confidence that we can deliver 8% to 10%. In our hearts, we believe we can do better. But I don't want to promise the world. I just, that's what I mean by promising the world. I don't want to promise an aspiration. I want to promise something that is credible, that I know we can do and that we can deliver on. Because I want people to trust what we're saying, that they can buy into that and back it. Because the ultimate thing here is, we need this transition of BP to be successful. I think all three of you would want us to succeed. Why? Not because you love BP necessarily, but because I think we all know that if BP makes a success of this transition, then maybe others will look at it and say, actually, this is actually quite good. What we need from that perspective is we need shareholders to back us. There's a lot of talk in the financial community about ESG and all of this good stuff. But fundamentally, we need to be backed because it's not easy what we're trying to do. It is challenging. It does have risks. We've been very clear about that. We've explained them. We've said we don't have all the answers. We've said we'll make mistakes. These are all things that we're very clear on. But we have a deep, deep conviction, a deep commitment. We believe we've got the skills to do it, but we need support and we need backing.

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