Renew On Line (UK) 29

Extracts from the Nov-Dec 2000 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

BP rebrands

British Petroleum recently launched its new corporate identity, with the familiar green shield replaced with a solar 'sunburst' image. BP has also dropped Amoco from its name, and says its initials should now be taken to reflect its move 'Beyond Petroleum'. It has doubled its investment in renewables, including solar, to $500m.

However Greenpeace was not impressed. It said that BP was spending more on rebranding ($100m) than it did last year on solar power, while at the same time ‘massively increasing their oil and gas production, including opening up the Arctic Ocean for new oil exploration’.

Certainly BP is continuing to increase its investments in oil and gas. In July it announced that Gross capital spending on exploration and production would rise to an average of $8 billion a year, on refining and marketing to $2.8 billion and on petrochemicals to $2 billion. And its new gas and power business would spend some $400 m.

In parallel, the rebranding and image update exercise will cost BP more than $200 million over the next two years, with $7 million already spent on the initial consultation and logo design.

The doubling of expenditure on renewables is obviously to be welcomed, but Greenpeace were hard to please. They said that it ‘does little more than bring BP into line with Shell's level of investment in green energy technology announced in 1997". In addition, it still only meant that ‘renewables would account for just 1% of their total capital spend. But oil and gas investment will increase by 40%, resulting in 50 times more cash going to exploration and production of fossil fuels than to green energy.’.

Greenpeace felt that in fact, the new marketing strategy had ‘more to do with BP's hopes of giving its service stations a higher profile as supermarkets, than any change in energy investments’. For example, they say, speaking to market analysts, BP Chairmen Sir John Browne recently noted that, with 28,000 service stations, BP is a bigger retailer than McDonalds.