BP’s North Sea Sale Illustrates Meg O’Neill’s Daunting Challenge

Amid a series of record and near-record profits being reported by the world’s corporate major integrated oil companies, venerable British major BP announced this week its intent to sell off its position in the UK-governed portion of the North Sea. The move signals an end of a 63-year era in which BP was the first to run seismic surveys in a search for oil and gas resources in 1963, and obtained one of the earliest leases auctioned by the British government in 1964.

For CEO Meg O’Neill, it is also a signal that her management team is intent on making moves from a reality-based standpoint rather than the aspirational, green-narrative-based strategies deployed since the year 2000. That was the year when then-CEO John Browne decided to change the company’s name from British Petroleum to Beyond Petroleum, one of the most in-your-face virtue signals of all time.

Since that move, BP has become increasingly less competitive with former peer companies like Shell, Chevron, and ExxonMobil as it strove to burnish its green street cred by targeting a significant share of a shrinking capital base to less profitable wind, solar, carbon capture, and biofuels projects.