BP ‘turtle’ out of the corporate he cherished after relationships with employees
B
ernard Looney was the final of a line of excessive flying BP tremendous execs nicknamed “the Turtles” after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They had been younger and bold “lifers” mentored by a former CEO John Browne and whose dizzying ascent up the greasy pole took all of them the way in which to the boardroom.
But simply as Browne’s BP profession resulted in ruins in 2007 when it emerged he had lied to a courtroom about his relationship with a person, now Bernard Looney finds himself questioning the place all of it went unsuitable.
The 53-year-old misplaced the job he cherished final evening working for the one firm that had ever employed him – aside from the household farm in Ireland – in probably the most brutal of circumstances after admitting he had not been totally candid with the board about previous relationships with colleagues.
He with large query marks hanging over him about how he had allowed his private life to carry his skilled profession to such an ignominious and abrupt finish.
Looney, who lives in Mayfair and earned greater than £10 million final yr, grew up removed from the boardroom reduce and thrust of a world multinational. His early years had been spent on a small dairy farm close to Kenmare, County Kerry in Ireland with simply 14 cows and eight acres of arable lands.
He was the one member of the household who went to school, having been inspired to learn every part he may by his mom. “She said if I could read, I could do anything.” Neither of his dad and mom stayed at school past the age of 11.
After graduating in engineering from University faculty Dublin, Looney was employed by BP and moved to London on the age of 20. He began out as a drill engineer within the North Sea in 1991 and spent a yr getting his MBA at Stanford University, the place he gained his accent described as “alternating between mid-Atlantic and Irish.”.
He additionally labored in Alaska, the Gulf of Mexico, the place he was a part of the workforce coping with the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, and Vietnam earlier than getting extra senior roles.
Looney later described the traumatic interval engaged on the Deepwater spill that finally value the job of his then boss Tony Hayward.
Looney was on the time head of BP’s North Sea operations and was drafted in to assist attempt to give you an answer to plug the properly.
He mentioned: “I was in Houston for 60 days straight helping out. To see what happened was very, very difficult. We will never forget what happened. We always have to have an eye on the past, because that has shaped the company. It was, without doubt, the most challenging time of my career,” he says.
“What you find during times like that is the depth and resources of people in the company and their extraordinary commitment.”
He lastly succeeded Bob Dudley as chief government in February 2020.
He turned generally known as a pushed and exhausting working government who spends many hours figuring out within the fitness center. He was a loyal firm man who mentioned in 2018 :”BP is an organization that has given me every part I’ve in my life.”
He definitely loved the trapping of a person paid thousands and thousands of kilos a yr and who as soon as, unwisely, described the enterprise as “a cash machine” when oil costs had been excessive.
Last yr it emerged that he had offered a 3 bed room flat in Mayfair to the developer Nick Candy for £6.5 million in November 2021. Less than a yr later Candy had flipped it for a revenue of greater than £2 million. At the time the developer mentioned: ““The size of the apartment is perfect,” he says. “It was just a bit tired and run-down; it needed a new kitchen and new bathrooms — it needed to be ‘Candyfied’.”
In October 2017 Looney married the life coach and GQ columnist Jacqueline Hurst, who Masterchef’s Gregg Wallace credited with serving to relieve his nervousness earlier than he appeared on final yr’s Strictly Come Dancing.
It was to show a brief lived union and the couple divorced with out kids in 2019 three months earlier than he turned BP chief government.
She later described her relationship with Mr Looney – and the way it ended – in painful element in her self-published e book How To Do You: the Life Changing Art of Mastering Your Thoughts and Taking Control of Your Life.
She wrote: ‘When my husband ended our marriage immediately and with out warning through a WhatsApp message, I used to be naturally devastated.
‘I discovered later that he had solely married me as a result of he needed to get to the following degree of seniority within the firm he labored for and he needed to be seen to be married, as a way to be given the promotion.
“Unbelievable, I know, but that was the case. Getting my mind – and thoughts -around what had happened took time.”
A pal of Looney defended him, telling the Sunday Times: “He was briefly married during a period in which he wasn’t promoted. So if he married her to get promoted, that didn’t seem to have worked.
After taking control of the CEO role in 2020 Looney has set a new agenda of reaching a net zero target by 2050 and has spoken of a ‘new purpose of reimagining energy for people and our planet’.
One industry source suggested to The Sunday Times he was ‘playing to the woke group’ and said there was ‘a degree of disenfranchisement, as you’d expect’ among BP’s ‘older generation’.
On his watch energy giants were at the centre of a public outcry over profiteering after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent oil and gas prices soaring. It sparked the cost-of-living crisis for households and record profits for the likes of BP. It reported annual earnings of £23 billion for 2022, the most it made since it began as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1909.
The year before the profit record, Looney compared BP to an ATM, saying: “When the market is strong, when oil prices are strong and when gas prices are strong, this is literally a cash machine.”
But as earnings data fell and payouts to shareholders rose – hitting $14 billion for 2022 in dividends and share buybacks – Looney courted additional controversy by watering down his firm’s commitments on local weather change.
Looney mentioned then that BP’s carbon emissions from its oil and fuel operations would fall by between 20% and 30% by 2030 measured from 2019 ranges, when its earlier goal was a drop between 35% and 40%.
He additionally elevated plans for oil and fuel output over the following seven years, a transfer welcomed by buyers and advocates for UK-run power manufacturing however slammed by local weather change activists.
He additionally spoke out on variety and LBGT+ inclusion within the office, which irritated a few of the previous guard however reassured BP that it had the precise man on the helm of a £90 billion firm that’s underneath scrutiny from all quarters.
The board had already investigated allegations about relationships Looney had with colleagues in May 2022 however discovered no breach of the corporate code.
Further allegations surfaced, and investigations proceed.
BP mentioned: “Mr. Looney has today informed the company that he now accepts that he was not fully transparent in his previous disclosures.”
He goes instantly, to palpable shock within the City, which knew that, no matter else, Looney cherished BP and believed in his mission.