BP: Breaking Promises?

assure you it is not greenwashing. Performing while transforming. I know I sound like a broken record that we're preparing VP for tomorrow. I think a few people will question are resolved to do that? Welcome to calling Bullshit the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what companies say they stand for and what they actually do, and what they would need to change to practice us what they preach.

I'm your host time Ontogue, and I've spent over a decade helping companies define what they stand for, their purpose and then help them to use that purpose to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot of organizations today, there's still a pretty wide gap between word. Indeed, that gap has a name. We call it bullshit, But, and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a treatable disease.

So when the BS detector lights up, we're going to explore things that a company should do to fix it. In this episode, we're gonna look at oil company BP. Recently, BP CEO Bernard Looney announced a new purpose to reimagine energy for people and our planet. We want to help the world reach net zero and improve people's lives. That's a pretty big shift for one of the largest current and historical producers of c O two in the world.

But the interesting thing about this story is it's not the first time that BP has made a bold claim about reimagining energy. Is it possible to drive a car and still have a clean environment. We think so. And now BP, Amaco Aco and Castrol have come together to try Beyond Petroleum BP. That's a commercial from way back in two thousand and one that was part of then CEO John Brown's bold rebranding of the company, claiming that the initials BP would henceforth stand not for British Petroleum

but for Beyond Petroleum. To understand just how significant the idea of beyond petroleum was, we need to take a quick trip back in time. B P was born in nineteen o eight as the Anglo Persian Oil Company. The company first staked claims on oil wells in what is now Iran. In the decades to follow, b P expanded their oil operations throughout the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, Europe and Russia. Along the way, they developed their own distinct cowboy culture. B P played hard, and they played

for keeps. For instance, a struggle for control of the company with the government of Iran resulted in the overthrow of democratically elected President Mosadek in nineteen fifty three. They also became known as the company that took the biggest extraction risks and then reaped the biggest financial rewards. As a result, they left a trail of environmental and safety

catastrophes in their wake. At nine p three a m. On Saturday, March the eighteenth, the Torry Canyon, one of the biggest tank as yet built, was turning the sea purple with a fatal cargo. A massive explosion and fire erupted at the VP refinery in Texas City, Texas. The explosion killed fifteen workers and injured one hundred eighty others,

many of them seriously. When CEO John Brown took over the company in nineteen ninety five, he inherited the biggest polluter with the worst safety record of the seven largest oil companies in the world, known as the Super Majors. But John Brown was a little different from his predecessors and peers. A visionary in his own way. He saw the perils of climate change, and he understood the oil industry's culpability. I believe we've come to an important moment

in our consideration of the environment. We need to go beyond analysis and to seek solutions and to take action. It is a moment for change and for rethinking corporate responsibility. BPS new CEO had become a vocal advocate for clean energy. He committed to reducing the company's greenhouse gas emissions and

invested in solar power and other alternative energy. Under Brown's watch, BP also broke ranks and exited the Global Climate Coalition, an oil industry lobbying group of businesses that opposed action to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in oil industry terms. BP had gone renegade. They had a new progressive story, and they had started to make that story real through bold action, but bold change in the oil industry makes enemies, in

some cases, really powerful enemies. In two thousand and six, these enemies began a whisper campaign about John Brown's private life. Well uh. In two thousand and seven, I was outed by the Mail on Sunday as gay, and that was a big shock, I think in the way it was done, not least to me. The press was relentless and fearing being outed, Brown lied under oath about his sexuality and was charged with perjury. On May one, two thousand and seven,

John Brown resigned as CEO. It's sad looking back on this from had John taken over only a decade later, being gay wouldn't have even been an issue. After Brown's departure, the head of oil exploration and Production, Tony Hayward, became the new CEO. The company divested itself of its alternative energy holdings and diverted that money to radically experimental deep water drilling methods, and then on April two thousand and ten, disaster struck. You have information now that this this rig

has gone under, It has gone onto the surface. Overnight, a powerful explosion rocked a giant oil rig igniting a fire and launching a day long search for eleven work early is a mess today because the winds shifted direction, blowing this oil, this sludge into the Bayous of southeastern Louisiana. The explosion was caused by a natural gas blowout a

mile down on the seafloor. The fail safe mechanism designed to stop the flow malfunctioned, and the equipment needed to solve the problem was on the other side of the world. Eleven people died and millions of gallons of oil were now gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. It was the worst oil spill in history, and BP was wildly unprepared to respond and to make matters worse, if you can imagine that was even possible. BP was actively trying to

play things down and play the victim. Chairman Tony Hayward, speaking to Britain Sky News, I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very modest, and a week ago this there's no one who wants this thing over more than I have. You know a lot my life. Back Crisis managers cringed when they heard that comment.

Any oil company would have suffered in this situation. But there was a special outrage reserve for BP because they claimed to be a green energy company and then wound up as the culprit in the worst environmental disaster in history.

Trust in BP was shattered. In retrospect, I'm guessing the new CEO, Bernard Looney wishes that John Brown's Beyond Petroleum plan had been implemented, BP would have had a twenty year head start on their competitors, all of whom have recently announced ambitious plans to make their own transitions to low carbon sustainable energy. Instead, like the rest of big oil, Looney has to make this transition fast, so folks. That

brings us to the main question. VP is once again saying that their purpose is to reimagine energy for people and our planet. Is this finally true or is it still a bunch of bullshit? Get out your BS detector and join me as we drove for answers right after this before you head to the break, we'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating.

Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five five or send a voice memo to CBS podcast at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode Welcome back. To help me get to the bottom of BP's renude commitment to cleaner energy for people in the planet, I first spoke with Tyson Slocum, an expert in the world of petroleum, natural gas, and power markets. Tyson, welcome to Calling Bullshit. We're very excited to have you

on the show. It's my pleasure to be here. I'd love it if you could start out by telling us a little bit about your background and the work that you do. Yes, I'm the Energy program director at Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a national consumer advocacy group based in Washington, d C. I run all of our energy policy related work and that mainly focuses on the oversight and regulation

of petroleum, natural gas, and electric power markets. Our goal at Public Citizen is to promote those policies that provide affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for working families. Fantastic. I love that. So let's get into BP. The topic of today is their energy transition goals and so just a kind of level set how much c O two is BP putting into the atmosphere in say an average year, a heck

of a lot. It's difficult to quantify, but they're one of the largest individual emitters just because the scope of their operations. They literally have a presence on every single continent. They have a massive carbon footprint. And then what's what's important here ties also they are a large historical emitter because the company has been around for such a long time that when you look at its entire leg you see footprint it's even larger, and it's going to be

one of the largest single contributors to climate change. From a corporate standpoint, and because of climate change, most of these companies have now announced their plans for so called energy transition. Your opinion, how serious do you think these companies are about making that transition. I think they're very serious about it from a public relations standpoint, But when you look at the day to day operation and even look at their capital expenditure plan going forward the next

five years, it is dominated by oil and gas. And it's important to note here that in BP's own financial results, they classify their natural gas production activity in with renewables, so they consider natural gas to be a clean source of energy when you know it is absolutely not. I did not realize that that's crazy. Yeah, so so that's the problem. You know, BP isn't alone here, but BP is desperately trying to reclassify itself as a clean energy company.

And again tied, this isn't new. I mean it started twenty years ago when they came up with this advertising plan to be on petroleum exactly. Yeah. So BP has been in this process of reinventing itself from a public relations standpoint for a very long time. But in terms of its operational standpoint, BP is an oil and gas company. Period. Yeah. So, within two weeks of taking the reins as CEO at BP in February of Bernard Luny outlined a whole new purpose for BP. He says, it is to reimagine energy

for people and our planet. We want to help the world reach net zero and improve people's lives. And then down in the details he lays out specific goals for getting BP to net zero. He calls them aims, which I find kind of a weasily word. How about commitments, Bernard? But okay, so he says, our first goal is net zero operations are aim one is to be net zero across our entire operations on an absolute basis by or sooner. This aim relates to Scope one and t G h

G emissions. So first of all, what does that mean? So that just means the emissions footprint of BP and its operations, not of how it's fuels are going to be consumed and therefore add to climate change. And so you know, just from the very get go, their definitions of reaching net zero have a massive flaw. Exactly. Okay, So so just to to school me up, let's move to their aim to our aim too, is to be net zero on an absolute basis across the carbon in

our oil and gas production by sooner. This is our Scope three aim and is on a BP equity share basis excluding holdings in Rosineft, the Russian company run by Putin's number two guy, that they just announced they were going to divest of. But staying with what's on their website, that Net two goal to be net zero on an absolute basis across the carbon and our upstream oil and gas production by sooner. What does that mean? So they're they're talking about Scope three emissions for their oil and

gas operations, which appears to be more comprehensive. But still this is a goal by and that isn't really that ambitious. We're looking at another generation or more of signifigant oil and gas extraction opportunities for BP, and so in terms of meaningful action to address the climate crisis, I don't see the ambition in this, you know, net zero goal by as being relevant. So you don't think it's enough and and and the timeline is too long? Is that

sort of your take? Absolutely? And this is this is the challenge, right. It seems sort of silly for an oil and gas company, especially one as large as VP, to be talking about getting to real, meaningful net zero, whether we're talking about five years or forty years, because you're going to have to transform the fundamentals of the company. And I don't see where that is happening yet at BP. You know, we're talking about sort of nebulous goals far

off in the future. I don't see how those long term goals are affecting to days operational priorities at BP. I still see capital being first and foremost allocated to continued oil and gas development and and that's the big challenge.

And for any large oil major tie there's going to be a market challenge to doing a real transition to renewables, for example, because during that transition, let's say BP has a real meaningful plan which I don't see but just for conversation purposes to transition off of oil and towards renewables.

The market is just gonna want to see BP split into separate companies because the market value of a pure renewable play is going to be dragged down by the continued operations of oil and gas, which the market is not going to see as having enough growth. And so as long as BP remains an integrated company that is trying to get into renewables while still primarily being an oil and gas company, those oil and gas operations are always going to drag on the value of the renewable investments.

And so what you would see from Wall Street is

they would say split up the company. Interestingly, a former CEO, John Brown, is recently on record saying he thinks that's a good idea to spin out the renewable energy assets as a separate company, essentially create BP Future, which is rapidly growing, less capital intensive, and valued at a premium by investors, and then by default create BP past, which is the oil and gas assets, capital intensive, unloved by the market, and in decline, and then just let the

market decide. What do you think about that? I think that's how all of these oil and gas companies are going to have to go. If if you're going to remain a publicly traded company, off ring shares of the public, that's the only strategy that makes any sense. And the fact that BP hasn't done that split yet shows that their financial and capital commitments to renewables aren't yet meaningful enough to orchestrate that split. Yeah, Leoney doesn't like the

idea of splitting up. He actually responded to Brown and he said he wants to use the cash of the high carbon business to fund the transition. He calls it, what is it? He's got a catchphrase for it, performing while transforming. That would be believable if that's what was

actually happening. But when we look at the balance sheet, BP is still pouring billions of dollars every year from its earnings on oil and gas operations into more capital investment for additional oil and gas exploration and production, and into dividends. Because the way that these oil companies try and keep their stock price attractive because they're being eclipsed, all of them by companies like Tesla and renewable energy

companies that just have way more growth potential. The way that BP markets itself to fund advisors and to other big institutional investors is the lucrative dividend that they pay out in cash every quarter, and so a bunch of the profits from their oil and gas operations are just going into pumping up their stock price to make it continually attractive. And so until we see a deviation from big capital investment in oil and gas and the big

investment in dividends, this is inaccurate. They are not moving that profit from today's oil and gas operations into tomorrow's renewables. Sticking with the the aims that they have on their website, I just want to go through a couple more that, frankly I just don't understand. Aim three is to cut the carbon intensity of the products that we sell by by twenty fifty or sooner. What does carbon intensity? What does that mean? So this is talking about the relative

carbon emissions for energy resources. So a lot of this is BP and some of the other majors like Chevron, and Shell have been increasing their investments into natural gas, and so the way that they measure it is gas has a lower carbon intensity than oil. It is not a clean resource, right, it is a fossil fuel, but compared to oil, and so a lot of this carbon intensity talk is really about a shift into natural gas.

And you know, a lot of that is because they see continued market opportunities for gas in the power generation sector, in the industrial sector, and in the agricultural sector with for utilizers and so forth. So again, this is the challenge. They're using these words that sound like they're doing a serious pivot into renewables, but it's not. It's just putting slightly more investment into gas over oil, and they're able to count that as a lower carbon intensity going forward.

It's not, you know, going to deliver us on a path to meaningfully addressing the climate crisis, right, Okay, So Aim four is to produce methane. It says our aim force to install methane measurement at all of our existing major oil and gas processing sites, by published the data, and then drive a fifty reduction in methane intensity of our operations. So, first of all, why is this important? What's special about methane. So, methane is a extremely powerful

greenhouse gas. It is many many, many times more powerful than carbon dioxide. It doesn't last in the atmosphere as long as c O two, but methane, for the briefer time that it is in the atmosphere after being released, is far more potent. And so the Obama administration in two thousand twelve introduced sweeping requirements and mandates to control methane emissions from oil and gas operations, and BP and

all the other oil companies successfully fought it off. Now we've had a change in heart, and really what what changed was in November, a energy company that is partly owned by the French government called Energy canceled a major liquefied natural gas export deal with a US based l en G exporter because of the lack of any meaningful methane regulations on US gas production or US gas exports.

And that cancelation of that seven billion dollar deal was a wake up call for oil and gas producers everywhere that all of a sudden there was a emphasis on controlling and measuring the carbon content of natural gas production. And so we have now seen a total one eight where BP actually was sending out tweets in support of Biden administration efforts to revive federal regulation over methane emissions. And so this is BP trying to get out ahead

of a market trend. Oil companies are uniformly against regulation unless that regulation can provide market access opportunities, and in this case, regulating methane emissions and documenting your ability to limit fugitive emissions is seen as a market opportunity because you're able to slap a label of clean methane on your natural gas and make it more desirable for export and consumption in global markets. So it would have been great if BP was making this announcement a decade ago.

Another point that they make on the website to help the world get to net zero is aligning associations. Our aim is to set new expectations for our relationships with trade organizations around the globe. In September of September, in a publication called The Resilience, they point out that VP still supports eight anti climate lobbying groups as of that date. And you know that's eighteen months after Bernard Looney took his job, and they had plenty of time to clean

that up by September. Are you aware of any issues there and what does that make you think about BP? Absolutely, this is a huge problem. And just for a second, let me just talk about trade associations in general, because it's sort of a fascinating, crazy situation that your listeners may not be familiar with. So what a trade association. Let's take the American Patrolum Institute, which is the largest and probably the most successful trade association lobbying group in

the United States today. It's got an annual budget in excess of three million dollars a year. And so what API does is it collects dues from BP and Xon and all the other companies and allows them all to actively collaborate on influencing legislation and regulation. So, while oil companies compete in the marketplace, when it comes to influencing our politicians and our regulatory structures, they are actively colluding

because they have a shared common interest. And so you're absolutely right that BPS stated commitment to only joining those trade associal stations that align with efforts to address the climate change do not meet reality because they continue to pay millions and millions of dollars in dues to trade associations that are actively fighting against climate solutions. Luney has also made a few subsequent promises after he rolled out

this plan. One of them was in August he said to investors that VP will reduce oil and gas production by within a decade, and that was two years ago, so he's got eight years left, and that they would stop exploring for oil and gas fields in new countries in the same time frame. So I guess do you read from that that he's saying he's prepared to leave oil in the ground to make this transition work. I I don't think that he's realistic about those commitments. I mean,

these are non binding commitments. First of all, they're just public announcements promises, um. So without a binding commitment, the company can make whatever adjustments and changes it wants. I don't see this as to be very honest and meaningful commitment. BP is still committing the vast majority of its capital investment into exploration and production, and and that tells me

that BP remains an oil and gas company period. One of the things that we're exploring on this show is kind of a an evolved version of capitalism, let's call it. That includes some of the externalities that companies really like to ignore. So right now, for instance, there are a lot of externalities that are not priced into a gallon of gas, the costs of climate change, for instance, right, and in a way, it keeps the price of a

gallon of gas artificially low. For example, the New York Core of Engineers is proposing a sea wall that will cost hundred and nineteen billion dollars to protect the city from rising sea levels. Is that cost figured into every barrel of oil today? Not at all. In fact, there is no federal regulation of carbon emissions from oil and

gas operations, so they're getting a free pass. And you just summed it up correctly that there are large externalities with fossil fuel production and consumption that are not reflected in the market price, and so all of society has to pick up that tab. Look at the infrastructure bill that President Biden just signed into law at the end of last year. It includes eleven billion dollars of taxpayer money to clean up coal mines. You know, why, why

aren't coal companies doing that? There's also billions of dollars in there of taxpayer money to plug up old and abandoned oil and gas wells. Some of those were BP's old oil and gas wells. So so again, the fossil fuel companies enjoy today's profit of extracting these fuels without any of the long term financial obligations that their business causes.

That needs to change. I've read that there are a number of cities and towns who have actually started to sue fossil fuel companies to try to recover some of that money. Have any of these lawsuits succeeded so far. They're all moving through the federal and state court systems, and they're using very inventive tort law. You know, tort is if you sue for damages. I slipped on the sidewalk in front of your business because you failed to maintain it, and your failure to maintain that cause me

bodily injury. I am do damages for my pain and suffering. So this is sort of the same thing. The oil and gas industry new decades ago that their business was contributing to climate change, but didn't do anything about it. And that's the key from a court decision that they knew that their business was creating these harms and they

did nothing to address them. And we all are suffering as a result, and I think that's part of the motivation for a company like BP to try and get out ahead and to say, listen, we're in favor now of federal action to regulate these things so that we

can try to get out from these tort lawsuits. And in fact, there's a plan that's being underwritten by some of the major oil companies to establish a carbon tax in the United States, and there's a lot of merit to that, but when you look at the details of their proposal, they want the carbon tax in exchange for two big things, one evisceration of climate regulations over their business and immunity from tort lawsuits. Very similar, very similar,

very similar to what the gun manufacturers got. That annoying and shades of the tobacco industry as well. You know, they deny, deny, deny, deny, deny, and then you know, finally events catch up with them. You know, from our perspective on this show, we're looking for companies that are purpose let These are companies that by and large have a conscience. They actually are trying to make the world better and when they see a problem, they try and

solve it. They don't wait for the government to legislate. And so when VP says they're trying to take on climate change, our perspective is great, you sound like a purpose led company, But is their intention pure? Do they really mean it? And so one of the things we look for is self regulation by agreeing to a carbon tax, if they're trying to get out of paying for any liability for past harm, that does not clear our bar, at least at this show, like we would call bullshit

on that. So why do you think Looney announced these goals again in and why should we trust VP this time around? I think the reason that he's making this sort of recommitment on a public relations scale is because now there is a spotlight from large institutional investors, and these institutional investors have really in just the last couple of years ratcheted up their pressure on companies to show them the money in terms of commitments on climate change.

And so for an oil and gas company, that's sort of hard to do when your business is in fossil fuels. And so they're seeking to sort of mollify these institutional investors with a very slick public relations campaign that they're trying to rebrand BP again and and I don't know how many times one company can continually rebrand itself as being beyond petroleum, but that's what they're trying to do here.

It's difficult for them to escape their culture of non compliance in terms of safety and environmental record, and they're trying desperately to get back into that decision maker seat where they are one of the key brokers to try and navigate a new climate deal, but their reputation has taken such a big hit. I don't know if if they're going to be the ones doing it again. What is the number one action that you think Bernard Luni should take to actually deliver on their stated purpose to

reimagine energy for people and our planet. First, I would exit all fossil fuel trade associations, get out of the American Patrol of Institute and all of the others. Second, commit to specific legislative climate initiatives. Because all of these companies can do their unilateral goals on their websites, but without some sort of buy ending operation through national governments, we're not going to see the kind of meaningful action

that's required. And so I want to see BP support climate initiatives without the harmful caveats like it's done on carbon taxes, where it says we'll support a carbon tax if we have immunity from prosecution under tort law. I think Looney needs to commit to a specific time frame to split off the company. If he's serious about real aggressive investments in renewables, then he's got to put his money where his mouth is. And and right now, when I look at where BPS money is, it's all in

oil and gas. Tyson, is BP a bullshitter, an absolute bullshitter. So just BP, stop the charade your oil and gas. Love it? Okay, last question on this show. We have a tool that we call the BS scale, and it goes from zero to one, zero being the best, zero BS being the worst. Total BS. So on a scale of one two hundred on the B S scale, where would you rate BP. They've got legitimate investments in clean energy, it just is minuscule in proportion to their investments in

oil and gas. So I have to give them credit for some of their genuine pivot. It's just not nearly enough. So I love it perfect. Tyson Slocum, thank you so much for being on the show. I really enjoyed it. Absolutely, my pleasure Okay, folks, it's time to make the call. Is BP really reimagining energy for people in our planet? Based on what I've heard so far, we gotta call bullshit?

Even if Luney is serious, and that's questionable at this point, BP isn't taking some fairly obvious actions that would signal that seriousness. But remember, bullshit is a treatable condition. All it takes is action. After the break, I'll be joined by two experts in the oil business and climate change to help us explore the actions BP should take to fix it. Stick with us, Welcome back. New CEO Bernard Looney is saying a lot of the right things, but

we've now drilled into it and we struck BS. So what are the actions that Bernard and his leadership team would have to take to plug this gusher and actually win back our trust. I've invited two experts have joined me to propose the concrete actions that BP needs to take. Jamie hen, Co founder of three fifty dot org and director of Fossil Free Media, and Duncan McLaren, Research fellow at Lancaster Environmental Center with an in depth expertise in

climate and energy policy. Jimmie I'd love to start up by just having you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and the work that you're doing at

Fossil Free Media. So I started my career in climate activism as one of the co founders of three fifty dot org, which grew into one of the largest international campaigns on climate change, and over the decade of working there, worked on a lot of different international mobilizations and projects, often wearing the hat of our communications director, and over the years, one of the things that I noticed that we were trying to raise awareness about the climate crisis

and push our governments to act, was that every time environmental campaigners would try and come out and spur the world into action, we would face a massive of backlash from the fossil fuel industry, often in the form of pr and advertising, and so as I was thinking about the next stage of my career at the beginning of I started talking with a few other colleagues and friends about this idea of seeing if we could set up a operation that would both provide good communications support for

groups who are taking on the fossil fuel industry, but also see what we could do to try and throw a wrench in the gears of big oils propaganda machine, and so out of that fossil free media and a

campaign that we're running called Clean Creatives were born. And through both of those efforts we try and help environmental groups do a better job of communicating to the public about the energy transition that we need to see, while also calling out the work that the fossil fuel industry and their allies are doing to try and pollute the airwaves just as they pollute the atmosphere. Love that, Professor Duncan McLaren. Welcome to calling BS. It's a pleasure to

be with you. I'd love to have you tell our listeners a little bit about your background and your area of focus in the energy sector. So thanks. Well, I'm sort of on my second career now. My first was working for environmental NGOs on a whole range of topics from sustainable development to corporate accountability, renewables development, and of

course climate targets. But in twenty eleven I gave that up for family reasons mainly, but embarked on a PhD looking at geoengineering technologies in the context of the climate justice debate, and that sort of led me into ten years of working on particularly carbon removal and more broadly what I call the problems of technologies of prevarication, the ones that allow us to believe that we are going to solve the climate problem in the future with a

new technology rather than by delivering behavior change and lifestyle change today. That's great, great to have you here, So let's jump right into some ideas for fixing VP Jamie, I'm gonna ask you to go first, in two minutes or less. What's the number one thing that you think BP should do to win our trust that they really

mean what they say. Well, I think that there's a few different categories of where we need to see action from BP, and I'll start with the most obvious, which is that they need to stop exploring for new oil and gas and fully begin to wind down their existing production in line with the Paris Agreement. They've made some commitments around that, but it's needless to say they're not yet at the pace, the scale, or really the commitment that we would need to see if they were serious

about making that transition. So the nuts and bolts of actually doing the work to stop oil and gas production that's leading to the carbon going into our atmosphere versus making yet more pledges and long term targets is really where we need to see action. But I want to highlight a couple others in my remaining minute here. First

off is on the lobbying in political front. You know, we've seen a lot of rhetoric, as you said, from Bernard Looney and BP about how they want to aid the energy transition, but as I speak, they continue to remain members of uh big oil trade associations and front groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which is the leading edge of the industry's attack on climate policy here in the United States, and BP over in Europe continues to lobby for things like natural gas being included in the

European Unions standards around investments, which is obviously not renewable energy is it's meant to meet the criteria. So stopping that lobbying is extremely important. And finally, along with that goes stopping the sort of greenwashing and advertising that they're doing that is very clearly meant to mislead the public into believing that BP is serious about the energy transition when the vast majority of its investments are still going

into oil and gas. Great, those are all very interesting, and we will unpack some of those in due course. Duncan Europe next in two minutes or less? What is the number one thing or things that Bernard Looney should do to get vince all of VPS deck orders that he actually means what he said. PP needs to set absolute, hard and fast production reduction targets, stop messing around with intensity targets and scams about which scope of emissions are

going to be covered. Set targets to reduce the amount of oil and gas they produce, and those targets need to be matched so that there is reliable, permanent, guaranteed carbon removal on a ton for ton basis for any residual production that happens let's say after and probably about of anything after that would get them in line with the Paris requirements. Why do I ask for this, Well, it's centrally about a climate justice case. NET zero is

a great lobal target. It's got a lot of people converging around it saying we want to do this, but it's ambiguous. It could mean an awful lot of emissions matched by an awful lot of removals. Imagine two elephants sat on a sea saw as we call it a tita totter, as the Americans call it. That's not very stable or sustainable. It's likely to break. What we need is a narrow convergence where there are only a few residual emissions and equal amount of carbon removal. So two

mice sat on the tita totter. That means. That means that you have less impacts from the residual emissions and all the things associated with that, the extraction, the oil spills, etcetera. These are not just climate impacts when we go digging for oil and gas, both of those are great. It's my turn now, I submit this humbly looney need to do an action that would cause me to suspend my disbelief. And when I think about it, my skepticism really comes

from two things. Obviously, the fact that we've been here before. With BP, they talked a huge game about moving in quotes beyond petroleum and then turned around and created one of the largest environmental disasters in the history of the oil business in the Gulf of Mexico. But there's a second thing that makes me skeptical that really centers around

the expectations of existing shareholders. You know, we have this financial system where investors are trained to expect quarterly reporting and positive quarterly results, and they're also trained to punish c e o s who don't deliver them. And this obsession with quarterly results is a major impediment to any

CEO who is serious about transforming a company. And so my idea is that Bernard Luney should announce that PP is going to discontinue quarterly reporting, and I think he should say that his rationale for this is that the only way to create long term shareholder value is to think and act on behalf of shareholders in the long term.

And there's precedent for this. Paul Polman did it at Unilever more than ten years ago, and Paul also managed to deliver outstanding financial results, but those results took time. And I think that that's what Looney should do is by himself some time by taking that one action, and I think that would signal real change at VP. It would signal that the board is with him on this

transformation journey that he has embarked on. It would set the stage for a number of additional actions that would continue to build trust, for example, publicly tracking the progress that they're making toward the goals that they've put forward, transparently reporting on problems that they've encountered along the way without tanking the stock necessarily. So I'll pause there. What are your thoughts on that or any of the ideas

been moved forward. Well, I think it's interesting that you brought up investors because I think a lot of what we've seen out of BP is aimed at a few

different audiences. Right now, marketing and PR is really focused on the general public, but a lot of what BP has been doing I think is best understood as trying to persuade their investors, and not just individual investors, but large institutional investors like pension funds and others, that they're simultaneously serious about pursuing climate action while also maintaining their

oil and gas business. VP is trying to do this awkward dance where it wants to convince it's more green oriented investors that it's serious about climate while also showing that it will continue to get high profits from oil and gas. And so this dance is what I think

we continue to see from big oil majors. Is on the one hand, trying to market themselves to concerned investors and regulators in the public as being serious about climate action, while also turning around to some of their other shareholders saying, don't worry about all of that. We're still serious about oil and gas and we're going to drill, baby, drill until the very last second. He's got a name for it, performing while transforming, and that just to me, reeks of bullshit. Duncan.

What do you think about it? Yeah, Yeah, to turn to your suggestion, ty though, of discontinuing quarterly reporting. So quarterly reports they instill a short term is um in corporations that goes against all we want to achieve on the environmental and sustainability front. But at the same time, it's the over long termism of targets like net zero by that is allowing the exploitative attitude. We need action now that cuts in missions dramatically in the next decade

if we're going to be compliant with PARIS. So I think stopping quarterly reporting could be a component of what BP should do. They would also clearly need to improve the nature of a reporting so that it's properly consistent with the different impacts they're having and to be accountable to stakeholders outside of the shareholders themselves. Yeah, and and I heard you both in your ideas essentially say that

the aims that VP has put forward are soft. Even for instance, net zero by can be achieved in a lot of different ways. And I don't want to put words into your mouths, but it's you can do it by planting a lot of trees and offsetting, or you can do it by actually not pumping oil out of the ground. And you are advocating for the ladder rather

than the former. Is that correct. I'm definitely saying that VP cannot contribute to net zero if it goes on increasing its production and emissions and believes that it can offset all of that. So at the moment we in b people fifty thousand tons of carbon offsets, it was responsible for around one point six giga tons of emissions. So you've got to be cutting emissions. You can't just be offsetting what is left that you might offset in

some way. You have to offset through balancing it with things that actually remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and they have to remove carbon permanently or durably. Can you explain some of those permanent carbon removal technologies? Most of them are currently quite speculative. There are technologies though, that use renewable energy to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

with a chemical agent of some sort. To expose this chemical agent to the atmosphere, it absorbs some CEO who You then put it in an enclosed chamber, expose it to heat or pressure. The CEO two comes off. You can pipe it off, compress it and inject it underground, and as long as you do that in somewhere like a say line aquifer, it will almost certainly stay underground for thousands of years. Another very permanent form of carbon

removal is called enhanced weathering. Again, you need some renewable energy. You grind up basalt or other reactive rocks quite finely, spread it on the land surface, and as the rain flows through it, it removes or effectively the calm dark side in the rainwater reacts with the rock goes off in the runoff, and at least in theory, ends up in the oceans, where it ends up as carbonate, and that's where our limestone comes from. So that's that's millions

of years. So there's a lot of these techniques. None of them are perfect, none of them would be scalable infinitely, but where scientists are hopeful, let's say that maybe somewhere between two and five gigatons a year could be removed using these technologies in the latter half of the century once once they've been developed. So it sounds like once again they just need to stop producing oil. I want

to pivot to Jamie. A big part of the BP story, Jamie relates directly to your thesis at Fossil Free Media that AD agencies and PR companies are some of big oils or maybe big carbons, not so secret weapons. How big a problem is the marketing industry in this equation. I think it's a huge problem, and I think that PR and advertising and marketing have been one of the largest barriers to climate action that just because it's in

such plain sight, we often don't see it. And BP is a really interesting case study because I think that of all the oil majors, they have always been the most attuned to their public image. But it's worth remembering that, as you mentioned earlier, it was all the way back in that the previous CEO of BP was making announcements about how they were going to become a new type of energy company, and that led to then the rebrand

in two thousand of BP two Beyond Petroleum. Yeah, John Brown, I mean that was twenty years ago that they made this beyond Petroleum rebrand. They're not beyond petroleum twenty years later. And I think that we should take that lens towards the commitments that they're making today, that maybe there's a higher degree of seriousness, there's more political pressure, but BP hasn't shown in the past that it was serious about

any of these claims. There's a fascinating example of this from the current era, which is actually a leaked presentation that came out at the beginning of which is right when Bernard Looney, the new CEO, is taking on BP and wanted to restructure the company. And the presentation was done for BP by the ad agency w P P,

which is the world's largest kind of advertising conglomerate. And this was an effort holding company, and this was an effort by w PP to kind of bring together some of its top people and say we're going to kind of do a first stab at what a new brand, a new image, a new marketing approach for BP could look like that they would then use in all the

advertising and all the advertising relationships that they have. And it's really a fascinating document because it basically walks through the fact that yes, BPS, you know core businesses oil and gas, and we're going to be expanding upstream production YadA, YadA YadA. But also, you know, we need to convince the public that quote, we get it on climate change, um.

And they run through this incredible series of slides about how the world changed in because of the global climate strikes in Grettith Thunberg and everything that had happened, and BP was wasn't trusted on this important issue of climate change that the public cared about. So they needed to do something to signal that they got it on climate change. It could be part of the energy transition. Of course, nothing in the presentation was actually about concrete things that

they would do, like stopping gas production. It was all about the ways that they would remark it themselves. And so I think it's worth all of us, you know, being able to see that stuff is what it is, which is propaganda. It seems clear that the economics of wind and solar have gotten much much better, very compelling

these days. Isn't there a strong argument for BP just being a responsible steward for their shareholders money, investing more money in those technologies and you know, leaving some oil

in the ground. I think the problem is that from the shareholder perspective, from the workings of contemporary capitalism perspective, BAPY has these huge assets that are reserves of oil and gas in the ground, and their corporate valuation reflects that their ability to pay dividends or if it's that, and as soon as they start saying, oh, we're going to leave some of that in the ground, then yes,

they are managing a financial decline. And in a sense it means that that certainly my challenge to to burn a Lney to say, set targets for reducing production is going to be very hard as a businessman for him to take. I just, yeah, I want to zero in on this point DU's making because I think it's so critical. I think the BP and other oil majors want to convince the public that their key to the energy transition. The reality of it is that, yes, there is money

to be made in clean energy. Maybe big oil companies aren't the best suited to do that. You know that there are clean energy companies that should be doing that, and I think it raises a question for us, do you really want BP to be controlling the energy of the future. This is the company that has for decades run over communities, violated international human rights laws, billed oil into the Gulf of Mexico, failed to clean it up,

failed to hate the money that it was owed. I don't want BP running the clean energy of the future. I'd much prefer that it's managed publicly, that it's in smaller cooperatives, and we have that choice right now. To

make that transition into Duncan's point. What we need for BP they should be held accountable for the damage that they've gone and the ill begotten profits that they've made during a period in which we knew, and they knew from their own science, that every barrel of oil they dug out of the ground was furthering a planetary catastrophe. They knew that last quarter when they made record profits.

So why should they and their shareholders who also knew that and have decided to stick with BP, why should they be rewarded for that? So, if I may, what I'd like to emphasize about that is how the dynamic of oil companies wanting to maintain the value of their reserves, and oil companies doing political lobbying and marketing to position themselves as part of the energy transition are both about the modern face of climate denial. The modern face of

climate denial is about delay. It's to say, oh, yeah, of course, now we're we're happily accept that climate change is happening. We understand this is a problem. But if we move too quickly, then we cause all sorts of other problems, and those things all converge around them extracting the most profit from their asset base and continuing to

prolong the climate crisis. I want to ask you both to suspend your disbelief for a minute, because in this part of the show, I do want to explore actual ideas, like if we're going to take them seriously and say, okay, they really Meanwhile, they're really trying to do this, what should they do? So so let me run a couple of ideas past both of you and just get your

get your take. So, first of all, John Brown, the former CEO of EP who actually initiated the Beyond Petroleum rebrand and and began what I believe was at the time a genuine attempt at a transition to being a

sustainable energy company. He recently said that he thinks that the company should be split into to spin out the renewable energy assets the company has as a separate company, essentially create VP Future, which is rapidly growing, less capital intensive and valued at a premium by investors, and BP passed the oil assets, which are capital intensive, unloved by the market and in decline, and then just let the market decide. So this is a former CEO saying this,

what's your take on that? Yeah, that would be interesting if PP moved in that direction. The one thing I'd raise on it as a challenge. I know we're trying to be a bit more optimistic here, but since Duck and I are good skeptics, it's okay. Is that the liability issue. If if BP has known for decades that their products were causing climate change, like Big Tobacco new that its product was addictive and causing health impacts, what sort of responsibility do they have to help pay for

the damage that those products have cost. And so when we talk about BP being able to spin off a company, you know that's often what companies do to avoid liability. And so I think the question would be making sure that um, you know, they're not able to kind of dodge their social responsibility by creating a dirty version of their industry and then hiding the assets there. But maybe to embroider the thoughts of what would be p do if they were admitting some liability, what would be the

sort of investments or spending they should do. And here I think that the idea of a just transition and energy transition that actually pays attention to social justice in terms of consumer need and worker need would be helpful. And you may know there's been extinction rebellion spinoff campaign in the UK recently called Insulate Britain. Well, I think

that's what BP should do. That they should actually do the program of retrofitting good insulation in the homes of people in fuel poverty, particularly the homes of people who are in fuel poverty because of the rising gas prices. And they should go a step further, of course, which is go around all those homes and install heat pumps instead of gas boilers, so that they could then cut the demand for the product that they've been selling and

profiting from the cost of climate change. I mean, that's a really important point, and I think Duncan raises another piece of this which is interesting, which is that for the transition to take place, we also have to deal with all of the oil and gas infrastructure that currently exists. You know, you can't just turn it off and then

leave it. They're spewing methane for decades to come, and so there's an incredible amount of work that BP could be doing, and it could be engaging probably more people that are currently employs to deal with all of the various oil and gas wells and infrastructure that has left behind. These in many ways, are forever liabilities that we're gonna have to deal with. It's not quite so simple as plugging a well and hoping that it never admits methane again.

You need people to go back and check it and verify that it's been done right, and then you know,

manage that process going forward. And so there there is a role in a way to kind of reimagine energy companies of the past, these oil and gas giants playing a role, as Duncan was saying, and helping kind of do the retrofits and transition we need to move to clean energy, but also taking some responsibility for managing the damage that they've done and making sure that over the decades to come, we're not having big blowouts of you know, c O two that's been pumped somewhere, or numerous oil

and gas wells continuing to leak methane and push us past global limits. Now tie to your question about shareholders, this may require us rethinking some of these says when it comes to capitalism, or beginning to at least put in some interesting government incentives and doing the finance work

to do that. And so I think that campaigners over the last few years have really begun to focus on finance as a key target, pressuring folks like Black Rock, JP, Morgan Chase, you know, others to play a larger role here. We need those players to come in. BP might not

be able to do this loan. They're big, but maybe they're not quite big enough to manage this, and so figuring out the ways to structure their debts and get government regulators involved in financed this whole transition is a really interesting process that we need people to start thinking about.

Pent Look, we're we're big fans of the notion of rethinking capitalism on this show, but I want to follow that thread because you mentioned black Rock, and we've done enough that black Rock, and we spoke with Taric Fancy, who's the former head of sustainable investing at black Rock and left because he just ultimately felt like he was

engaged in greenwashing there. And his take on the problem is that it is I don't want to put words in his mouth, but his basic thesis was that it's hopelessly naive to expect companies to essentially self regulate, and he thinks that regulation, specifically a carbon tax, is the only medicine that will solve the problem of climate change.

What are the two of you think about That a carbon tax could be a very helpful tool, It alone is unlikely to solve the problem because simply what we've seen in the past is that the generic incentive that a carbon tax or equivalent gives is rarely enough to bring about the transformation and technologies. So I think, yeah,

carbon tax good can help, not the single answer. Of course, when we're when we're talking about carbon taxes as the answer, we have to remember that that BP spent thirteen million dollars in eighteen blocking a carbon tax in a divin Washington State, and then afterwards just said, oh, well, it wasn't the right carbon tax initiative. And my experience going back over the years is that this is a common narrative. When companies are offered taxes, they say the taxes aren't

quite right and they weren't voluntary measures. When they're offered voluntary measures, they say, well, then we'll get undercut by the cowboys, so we need regulatory measures. And when they're offered regulatory measures, they say, well, this isn't really the free market. Why don't we have taxes. Yeah, we have a word for that. We call it bullshit. Which brings me to my final question for both of you on

calling BS. We have something called the BS index or the BS scale, and it goes from zero to one, zero being the best score zero BS and a hundred being the worst total BS. I want to ask both of you to read be e P on the B S scale. I'll start with you, Duncan. That's that's interesting. I'm gonna throw them a bone and give them only a writing. Okay, you're in a good mood today. Um, all right, thank you for that, Duncan and Jamie, Well, I'm glad Duncan said a high bar. You know, I

was thinking about this in two ways. One is sort of the only standard that really matters, which is the kind of standard of physics and chemistry and the climate, in which case, you know, maybe we'll give BP a score that relates to the amount of money they're still investing of their capex and in oil and gas, which is something like a ninety six percent um, And you know, maybe that's a good way to do it now, to throw them a bit of a bone, as Duncan did,

and we're trying to be charitable. I would say that BP is ahead of the other oil companies, and so maybe we'll drop it down to a nineties Nan was saying, because I think two bps credit. They have been the only one to really say that they do need to reduce production. They did right off seventeen billion dollars of oil and gas assets by saying that those were stranded and needed to be kept in the ground. And they have talked about sort of the larger need for this

transition to happen. And so you know, again, if anybody feels like we're being a little too harsh on them, just remember that they rebranded back into Fast and here we are today, and so I would take everything they do with a bit of skepticism, but at the very least, it's good to see them beginning to move agreed. Okay, listen this this was a great conversation. I could have spent the rest of the afternoon talking with both of you. I really appreciate it. So, folks, it's time to give

BP our official BS score. The companies saying all the right things, but they lost massive amounts of trust when they did this to us the first time, and as all of our experts have pointed out today, their actions so far are inadequate and incoherent at best. Based on what I've heard today, I'm going to give BP a ninety five. To bring that score down, they're gonna need to make some big changes. To weigh in with your own score, visit our website Calling Bullshit Podcast dot com.

We'll track BP's behavior over time to see if they can bring it down. You'll also be able to see where BP ranks on BS compared to the other companies and organizations we feature on this show. And if you're starting a purpose led business or you're thinking of beginning the journey of transformation to become one Here are three things that you should take away from this episode. One, Transparency and coherence build trust. It comes up over and

over again this season. BPS saying that they're pivoting to become a sustainable energy company but then also trying to convince the world that natural gas is a sustainable, renewable energy resource is just ludicrous, as is claiming that you're taking on climate change while at the same time remaining a dues paying member of an industry trade group that's spreading misinformation about climate change. If your words and deeds lack coherence, then anything you say, even if it's true,

will seem ridiculous. Two, show me the money. It's all about action. If VP means it, they need to prove

it through action. Today we've talked about important actions like cutting support for industry lobbying groups that are climate change deniers, or discontinuing any misleading pr or advertising, and potentially seismic actions like actually breaking the company into to make it really clear that there is a dirty fossil fuel VP of the past at a clean VP of the renewable and sustainable energy future, and then letting investors choose which

one they want to invest in. Your actions would undoubtedly be different, but the point is doing is always believing. Three. Let's forget about the oil for a minute. There's gold in this episode for purpose led entrepreneurs who want to create the BPS of tomorrow. As Jamie and Duncan both said, Big Oil has dragged its feet for so long that BP and the other super majors may not be savable, and that's fine. Sometimes companies just need to go away.

But there's an opportunity here to start a green energy company that isn't weighed down by legacy investments in fossil fuel. If nothing else, I hope this episode inspires somebody to just go make that happen. And Bernard Looney, CEO of BP, if you, whoever want to come on the show and talk about any of the ideas or topics that we touch on in this episode, I want you to know you have an open invitation. I'd like to thank everyone who joined us today, Tyson Slocum, Jamie Hen and Duncan McLaren.

You can learn more about them in our show notes. And if you have ideas for companies or organizations we should consider for future episodes, you can submit them on our website calling Bullshit podcast dot com and if we performed while transforming you today, please let us know by rating and reviewing us on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And thanks to our production team Hannah Beal, Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim

d s Moss, Hailey Pascalites, MICHAELA. Reid, Parker, Silzer based Soaper and me John Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created by co Collective and is hosted by Me Time onto you. Thanks for listening. Before you go, we'd love to hear what you think about the show. Maybe you were inspired to take action, maybe you disagree with today's bullshit rating. Either way, we want to hear about it. Leave us a message at two one two five oh five to Zo five, or send a voice memo to CBS podcast

at co collective dot com. You might even be featured on an upcoming episode.