<Plateau backgroundThe Oil DrumDrumBeat: June 15, 2006>

73 comments on New BP statistical review

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Prodigal Son on June 14, 2006 - 2:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
Say what you will about BP, but they have been engaging in this corporate rebranding for a long, long time. I remember getting a call in 2000 that was basically a market-research poll contracted by BP to see whether folks had bought into their 'beyond petroleum' spiel.

I basically told them that they could call the company 'Happy Love Pandas' but they would still be an evil oil corporation. Sometimes I wonder what kind of impact responses like mine had.

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Dave Cohen on June 14, 2006 - 2:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
That's not going to prevent me from buying some of their stock. BP's performance is the best of all the major IOC's.
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Oil CEO on June 14, 2006 - 3:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
uugghh. Try Halliburton. Oh, sorry, too late. What's the dividend on BP?

I always knew you were cool, Dave. No matter what the rhetoric, you know where the money's at.

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Prodigal Son on June 14, 2006 - 4:48pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
:-) No worries, evil often mean profitable.
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TrueKaiser on June 15, 2006 - 12:11am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
well what do you expect for a system that promotes such trait's.
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oilaholic on June 15, 2006 - 12:48am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Why own a resource extraction company that has no hope of replacing it's production.   Oil is increasingly the property of the country in which it is found, a paradigm shift of catastrophic proportions to the E&P world, particularly the majors.   Soon they will be reduced to doing contract extraction work, not the past model of exploring and producing for their own account, minus a "royalty".  Even the Canadians are now getting very nationalistic about oil - note today's story about Newfoundland refusing to let XOM and another major (Shell, I think) roll over them and threatening to cancel existing contracts.   Sounded like Venezuela.  And this from our northern neighbor.   I can't imagine wanting to own a major oil company when there are so many more attractive ways to play the future of oil.   By the time oil is over $150, the majors won't have any left to sell.
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wstephens on June 15, 2006 - 7:00am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I agree. Many oil stocks ("growth" investments) will need to be re-priced -- i.e. as bond-like investments ("return on/of capital" investments). Energy production trusts are already priced this way and may be a better "investment" on that basis.
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Leanan on June 14, 2006 - 2:32pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
George Monbiot doesn't buy it, either:

Behind the spin, the oil giants are more dangerous than ever

The green rebranding of Shell and BP is a fraud. Far from switching to biofuels, it's drilling and devastation as usual

For a company that claims to have moved "beyond petroleum", BP has managed to spill an awful lot of it on to the tundra in Alaska. Last week, after the news was leaked to journalists, it admitted to investors that it is facing criminal charges for allowing 270,000 gallons of crude oil to seep across one of the world's most sensitive habitats. The incident was so serious that some of its staff could be sent to prison.

Had this been Exxon, the epitome of sneering corporate brutality, the news would have surprised no one. But BP's rebranding, like Shell's, has been so effective that you could be forgiven for believing that it had become an environmental pressure group. These companies have used the vast profits from their petroleum business to create the impression that they are abandoning it.
 

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