Good morning.
My interview with BP CEO Bernard Looney yesterday prompted lots of feedback, so I’m following with more. There are two great debates going on right now about investment in oil and gas companies. The first is: If you really care about the climate, should you stop investing in oil and gas? I feel like the answer to that one is clear. As Looney said yesterday, oil and gas isn’t going away for decades. Disinvestment by shareholders serves no purpose except to allow investors who don’t care about the environment to earn a higher return. Better to stay in and push for change.
But that leads to the second debate, sparked by activist investor Dan Loeb. He is pushing Royal Dutch Shell to split into two pieces—“Green Shell” and “Brown Shell.” Green Shell would benefit from investor enthusiasm around clean energy, presumably have a lower cost of capital, and therefore be better able to meet the demands of rapid scaling. Brown Shell would have a higher cost of capital, grow more slowly, but reap nice dividends for those who own it…which, of course, they could always reinvest in Green Shell. In our conversation yesterday, Looney remained firmly committed to keeping both the “green” and “brown” businesses under one roof. From the interview:
“There is huge synergy…Let’s say you wanted to start an EV charging company tomorrow. The number one issue you have is access. There are 550 million people who live within 20 minutes of a BP site. Why wouldn’t we use that?
“I’ll give you another example. Let’s say you want to start a sustainable aviation fuel business. To decarbonize aviation, you will need to do three things: One, you need feedstock. We’ve got one of the largest trading organizations in the world to trade commodities…The second thing you’ll have to do is build a plant. We have decades of experience in building plants …And the final thing is you have to do is sell it. BP is in 700 airports globally, in 70 countries. We already have the infrastructure, the airports, the decades-long relationship with every airline in the world.
“So you look at that and think: My god, why wouldn’t you use that innate capability and help the world transition?”
We’ll publish the full interview with Leadership Next next week, accessible on Apple or Spotify—along with lots of other great CEO interviews. Spoiler alert: the best part was when my cohost Ellen McGirt asked him how to pronounce his first name. He quoted a friend who advised: “When your last name is Looney, who cares?”
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
