Saturday Ramble: BP — a spill destined to happen?
Way back in the halcyon years of the 1980s, I plied a trade as a freelance copywriter in the City of London. My main clients were in telecommunications, especially BT, or British Telecom as it was known then.
BP, or British Petroleum as it was known then, was also a player in my multinational ecosystem. In those days, it was good to be British. Margaret Thatcher saw to that. Now apparently it’s the kiss of death.
Watching the unfortunate Tony Hayward’s crucifixion at the hands of a US Congressional Committee on Golgotha Capitol Hill yesterday, demonstrated how the mighty are only milliseconds away from disaster at all times.
His defeated expression throughout the proceedings was in distinct contrast to that of his predecessor, John Browne, the real progenitor of the string of disasters now haunting Hayward, BP, its shareholders and pensioners, on both sides of the Atlantic.
On Jeff Randall’s Sky programme on Thursday evening, author and scandal-sniffer Tom Bower, reminded us of the precursor to today’s woes. Browne had bought heavily into American oil and turned upper-middle ranking BP into one of the world’s great corporations. Small in height, his alleged Napoleon complex had rendered him invincible in his own mind. And indeed for a long time it seemed true.
Nowadays he’s known as Lord Browne and was brought down by a sex scandal a few years back. One wonders if that was engineered by figures unknown to move him on out of sight.
At the height of his relentless drive for power and status, Browne ruthlessly cut costs and trimmed safety margins as a result. A string of major incidents occurred, involving many deaths and injuries. BP was gaining an accident-prone reputation in the American mind.
When a small pipe, thousands of feet down in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded, killing another 11 workers and polluting the fisheries and environments of countless people living along the US’s southern coastline, the dam of indignation and anger burst. It’s that spillover that now threatens BP more than the actual oil leak.
BP’s rise and fall is pure Greek tragedy. Even a minor godling looking down on the scene from Mount Olympus could have predicted the crash that was coming. In a small way I sensed it too after a final experience with the company in the 1980s.
I was asked to write a chunky booklet documenting and describing BP’s worldwide activities across all its divisions. These days they include, am/pm, Aral, Arco, Castrol, and Wild Bean Cafe, whatever that is. Back then it was chemicals and an array of petroleum products and outlets.
Entering BP’s massive headquarters in the City, I was met by a young woman from Tech Pubs who was to oversee the project. I was delighted to hear that the designer was someone I had worked with many times before and was a leader in his field.
The dampener came when Miss Tech Pubs warned me that the text would be scrutinized minutely by the senior managers of all the divisions, most of whom were engineers. I was experienced enough to expect a solid technical input.
Engineers worldwide have a peculiar way of expressing themselves. Most sentences begin with “Then …”, and the rest tends to be gobbledigook. If you’ve ever tried to master a manual accompanying a technical product, such as a top of the range digital camera, you’ll know what I mean.
Needless to say, everything I wrote was lifted out and replaced with chunks of already existent text written in impenetrable jargon. The broader purpose of the document, that of presenting BP as an inspiring benefactor of the Earth, was totally buried by formulaic spam.
When the final booklet appeared in print form, I was amused to note that the designer had used a small typeface and set the text blocks in a light grey on a white background. They were hardly discernible, except as a design element.
He had also agreed to a personal request to have my name discreetly removed from the cover. Tony Hayward eat your heart out.
For me, the writing was on the wall for BP back then. At its centre was a machine that preferred stale platitudes to vibrant messages, technical ramblings to vivid expressions of purpose. It was a vacuum that is visibly imploding today.
How can this massive international company retrieve itself from a seemingly impossible situation without being bitten to bits or swallowed whole by fat predators?
It should first do penance by admitting the early mistakes made in the John Browne era and the apparent inability to put them right over the last three years. Tony Hayward should go gracefully for the good of the company. An engineer with no public relations or presentational skills is of no use to BP now if it is to survive. So too should the silent Chairman.
I would recommend a massive programme aimed at finding new types of affordable, non-combustible energy, on top of its current commitments in the field.
This should be launched with an immense public relations effort around the globe, but especially in America. I’m assuming, of course, that the current leak and its effects will be cleaned up sometime during 2010, and certainly in time for next year’s fish stocks and holiday season.
Aggressive Big Oil should give way — if only partially and presentationally — to Saving the Planet.
John Evans
Recent Related Commentary
Saturday Ramble: President of the Royal Society criticizes the human brain
Saturday Ramble: The Grain of Things
Saturday Ramble: Should David Laws stay or go?
Saturday Ramble: The Conservatism is just below the surface
Saturday Ramble: Dick Clameron takes office
I’ve decided to give up writing about politics on this site. The reason is that, with a new business to run, there simply isn’t time.
At Davos today, Gordon Brown warned that countries should not resort to protectionism to remove their economies from the global slump. 
The word “protectionism” is on almost everyone’s lips these days. It’s viewed as a bogey word, depicting the worst that could happen.
It’s fascinating how the gathering slump has changed topics of general conversation. Nowadays you can catch shoppers in supermarkets discussing the price of Hungarian credit default swaps over the celeriac counter.
