BP CEO Bernard Looney pushes beyond recent headlines to detail the company’s upcoming plans
On this week’s episode of?Fortune‘s?Leadership Next ?podcast, co-hosts Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt talk with?BP ?CEO Bernard Looney . They jump right into a discussion of BP’s recent announcement that it would increase spending on oil and gas. Looney emphasizes that there is far more to the plan:
“As a result of leaning into our strategy,” he says, BP is “investing up to $8 billion more into the energy transition, up to $8 billion more into today’s energy system, so that we can provide energy security.” That all adds up, Looney explains, to a plan that moves BP from an oil company to an “integrated energy company.”
“There are two things that need to happen in this world,” he adds. “Number one, we need to accelerate the energy transition, and number two, that transition needs to be orderly. It needs to be orderly, because if it’s not orderly—as in, if we get supply and demand out of whack—you get what happened last year, which is you have a mismatch, and prices will skyrocket.”
They also discuss trust, the importance of attending to employees’ mental health, and the question Looney’s mother once asked him that still helps drive his push for fairness for employees today.
Listen to the episode or read the full transcript below.
Transcript
Alan Murray:?Leadership Next?is powered by the folks at?Deloitte , who, like me, are super focused on how CEOs can lead in the context of disruption and evolving societal expectations.
Welcome to?Leadership Next, the podcast about the changing rules of business leadership. I’m Alan Murray, and I’m here with the G.O.A.T. of co-hosts, that’s greatest of all time, Ellen McGirt.
Ellen McGirt:?I am excited. The ancestors are in the room today. As you know, Alan, I come from a long line of Moores and McBrides on my mother’s side, and we have a native son who runs one of the biggest oil companies, energy companies, excuse me, in the world as our guest today.
Murray:?And thank you for raising energy companies, because our guest is Bernard Looney, who is here in person with me. And Ellen, you had the appropriate first question for this conversation, sir.
McGirt:?Is it [pronounced] Bernard or Bernerd?
Bernard Looney:?Well, Alan, Ellen, thank you for having me on. It’s a privilege to be with you. I lived in, I’m Irish, as Ellen said. I lived in America, however, for nine years. People always struggled with pronouncing my name. And they would always call me Bernard. I would correct them and say it’s Bernard and I had a good friend from Mississippi, Charlie Powell, came up to me one day, and he said, hey, when your last name is Looney, who cares what your first name is? That’s what I’ve had to live with for some time. But anyway…
?[Laughter]
Murray:?I’m happy to call you, Bernard.?
Looney:?Bernard it is. Bernard, whatever works.?
Murray:?Look, let’s get right to the big question. I mean, you just this week reported record profits, I think, the largest in your company’s history, which is fabulous. Congratulations. But at the same time, you also said that you were cutting back on your commitment to reduce oil production and carbon emissions by 2030. Why are you doing that?
Looney:?Well, I think it’s probably worth just stepping back, Alan, for a moment. And in 2020, we set out a new ambition for our company, which is to become a net zero company by 2050. We’re the first major international oil company…
Murray:?You were way ahead of your competitors in making that commitment.
Looney:?And that commitment remains as true if not stronger today than it did three years ago. So we laid out that ambition, we laid out a new purpose for our company, which is to reimagine energy for people and the planet. We laid out a new strategy, which is to transform ourselves from an international oil company that we have been for 114 years to what we call an integrated energy company, whose purpose is to help solve the energy trilemma and the energy trilemma is how do we provide the world with lower carbon emissions energy? But also how do we provide it with more affordable energy and more secure energy?
Murray:?There’s a lot to unpack there. But let me just ask you, I mean, 2050 is a long time away…
Looney:?Correct.
Murray:?…you’re not likely to be CEO in 2050.?
Looney:?Correct.
Murray:?And I’m not likely to be doing this podcast in 2050. But what you said at the time was you would have a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030, a more reasonable forecast. And now you’re talking about something between 20 and 30. So substantially less than you said in that bold statement three years ago.
Looney:?Along with that, we also said that we would reduce our scope one and two emissions by 20%. We since updated that to up to 50%. So we’re going to reduce them by 50%. We said we’d spend $5 billion outside of oil and gas by 2030. Yesterday, we said that number would be seven to $9 billion. We said that we would be 50% reduction in our carbon intensity by 2050. Recently, we updated that to 100%. So yes, yesterday, we also said that as a result of leaning into our strategy, investing up to $8 billion more into the energy transition, up to $8 billion more into today’s energy system so that we can provide energy security, one of the outcomes of that is that instead of our production falling by about 40%, it will fall by around 25% in this decade. Still a substantial fall, less than what we said. But looking at this in the round, what we announced yesterday was a leaning in, a more ambitious strategy, 8 billion more than what we had previously announced into the transition, as well as $8 billion more into today’s oil and gas system.
Murray:?Yeah, it’s a complicated message. And we talk a lot about on this podcast about companies that are making commitments to society as well as commitments to their bottom line. And we’ve talked a lot about the climate transition. But it sort of raises the question I mean, I get the invasion of Ukraine has changed the market dynamics. There is a need for energy security. There’s a need for energy reliability, and there’s a profit imperative. You made a lot of money producing oil and gas. It does sort of raise the question, can society really count on profit-making companies like yours, no matter how well intentioned, to get us to net zero 2050?
Looney:?Well, let’s try and simplify it if we can, Alan, because it is complicated, but on the other hand, it’s quite simple. There are two things that need to happen in this world. Number one, we need to accelerate the energy transition. And number two, that transition needs to be orderly. It needs to be orderly, because if it’s not orderly, as in, if we get supply and demand out of whack, you get what happened last year, which is you have a mismatch, and prices will skyrocket, and people around the world are dealing with a cost of living crisis today. So there are two things that must happen.?
The transition must accelerate and the transition must be an orderly one. BP’s job is to do both. We’re doing both. We’re accelerating the energy transition and we’re ensuring that the transition is an orderly one. It’s not an or conversation. It’s an and conversation. That’s what we’re doing. And that’s what we announced, we said, we’re going to do 8 billion more in each of those.?
But you asked the question about, can you depend, can you rely on companies like ours? Let me tell you what we’ve done over the last three years, because I’ve been so proud of the team at BP for what they’ve accomplished and I just want to share it. In 2019, we spent 3% of our investment outside of oil and gas. Last year, we spent 30% of our capital in our transition growth engines. We went from 3% to 30% in three years. By the way, the majority of that here in the United States with a huge acquisition that we did on a landfill gas company that captures methane from landfill sites. So three to 30%. That number will be 40% in two years time. That number will be 50% in 2030. And let me give you a few numbers behind that because they’re important. When we started in 2019, our renewables pipeline was four gigawatts. Yesterday, it was 37 gigawatts. When we started, we had 7000 charge points for electric vehicles. Yesterday, we had 22,000 in three years, and we’re going to double that in the next two years. Lightsource BP developed 2.6 gigawatts of solar in 2019. [In] 2022 it developed 2.6 gigawatts. We had nothing in hydrogen, we have a big pipeline today. We had nothing in offshore wind, we have five gigawatts today. So when you look at the substance of it, we’re absolutely in action on the transition. And not or we’re investing in today’s energy system, which is an oil and gas system, so that we can make sure that people have the energy that they need at their fingertips, and to help make sure that it’s as affordable as possible.
McGirt:?I want to attack the same question from a slightly different perspective, an issue that’s vital to stakeholder management, which is trust. This is a complex message, it’s a complex problem, and we’re living in a complex world. And I appreciate your overall positive trajectory here that you’ve just laid out for us. But this is going to read for people and it’s clearly is when you check the news as a wobble from your original bold promise. And people are nervous that, as Alan said, that the allure of cash is going to move you in a direction that’s going to feel more like business as usual. How do you think about trust specific to BP? Specific To BP’s, you know, history in the world, maintaining, gaining or sometimes restoring trust?
Looney:?So I think in the matter of trust, Ellen, the first thing I would say is I understand it. I get it. If I look back on the industry, if I look back on BP’s own history, you know, we had a huge accident here in America over a decade ago. So, you know, I understand that question mark. And the first thing I always say to people at work is before we blame someone else for not trusting us, you know, hold up a mirror. My mother used to say hold up a mirror to ourselves, and make sure we take responsibility for where we are, and make sure that we listen to people that we don’t, somebody said to me once that we listened to respond, that we listened to understand. Because I think there’s too much in the world of listening to how do I respond, but my point we should listen to each other to understand. And to your thing my mother taught me was that God gave us to two ears and one mouth and we should use them in that proportion. I hope she wasn’t telling me specifically that as more of a general lesson in life. So I think there’s a lot there.?
But at the core of this, at the core of this, people will not judge us on our words. They will judge us on our actions. At work I say to people, because I’m a farmer, I say we need to turn what we’re doing from PowerPoint slides into shovels in the ground. We need real work, real action. People will believe us when they see chargepoints being put in. People will believe us when they see us building out solar facilities, when they see us building out hydrogen, when they see us buying Archaea for $4 billion. Trust is not going to be won by what I’m going to say. It’s going to be won by what we as a company are doing. And I have to say that while I understand that people are skeptical, I would encourage people to look at the facts. And I think the facts personally, I think the facts are pretty compelling. And we are leaning into this strategy. So I understand some of the feedback from yesterday. But you can’t argue, Ellen, with the fact that we just announced we’re going to put $8 billion more into the energy transition, not taking money out of the energy transition. So that’s the thing that I think we have to work on.
Murray:?What I’d like to ask you is you have such a massive portfolio of alternatives. Where’s the silver bullet? You know, is it biogas? Is it hydrogen? Is it carbon capture? Where do you think the biggest gains are going to come from?
Looney:?I mean, the reality, Alan, is that the silver bullet is something called everything. It’s an everything approach. And I know that people wish that whether it’s fusion, or whatever it might be hydrogen, whatever, that there was a silver bullet out there. There is no silver bullet. We’re going to need everything thrown at it. BP is not in the nuclear business, but nuclear will be part of this solution. There’ll be people who in their countries, hydroelectricity will be a big part of the solution. They need to do that.?
We’re doing things that fit with our competences. So the things that we’re focused on are bioenergy, which includes biogas and sustainable aviation fuel. We’re focused on EV charging infrastructure, because the reason people aren’t buying EV cars today isn’t just because they can’t get one. It’s also because they don’t think they can rely on the infrastructure. We’re focused on hydrogen, we’re focused on renewables: offshore wind, onshore wind and solar. So we’re playing to what we believe are our strengths.?I wish there were a simple, the thing I would keep an eye on in the future is X, Y, or Z, we’re going to need it all. And that all and this is where the uncomfortable truth comes in, for some people, that all includes oil and gas,.?
Murray:?For how long??
Looney:?For oil and gas is going to be around for decades and decades and decades. Even in the IEA Net Zero scenario, the world will still be needing 20 million barrels a day of oil in 2050. You look at any of these scenarios, you look at them objectively, oil and gas is part of the system for decades and decades to come well beyond the 2050s
Murray:?Will we meet Net Zero 2050??
Looney:?We must. And our strategy is designed to try to help us get there.
[Music]
Murray:?I’m here with Joe Ucuzoglu, who is the CEO of?Deloitte ?and had the good sense to sponsor this podcast. Thanks for being with us and thanks for your support.?
Joe Ucuzoglu: Thanks, Alan. Pleasure to be here.
Murray:?So Joe, this new wave of business technology, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, the ability to make intelligence out of data, is creating huge opportunities for companies. But a lot of the CEOs I talk to feel daunted by it. It’s like, where do they get the imagination to rethink their entire corporation? How do they deal with that?
Ucuzoglu:?The opportunities are immense, particularly when you look at not just any one of these technologies individually, but the convergence of all of them collectively creating the opportunity to truly transform business models. And I know it can seem daunting, but the reality is taking a first step in actually produces huge benefit. Because what we’re finding is that many of the cutting edge applications are not coming out of the corporate headquarters, they’re coming out of putting the technology in the hands of our people on the front lines. They find new and innovative uses. We then funnel them back up and leverage them across the entire client base.
Murray:?Yeah, it really gets to the importance of a culture of innovation at the company,
Ucuzoglu:?It is essential that our people feel empowered to take the latest and greatest and to find new and innovative ways to use it for productive purposes.
Murray:?Thank you, Joe.
Ucuzoglu:?Alan, it’s a real pleasure.
[End music]
McGirt:?When you became the CEO, you became the owner of the message—this bold and ambitious direction—and you referred to yourself as an upstream guy within BP lingo, that your primary experience was in the oil and gas part of the business. Can you tell us a little bit about how you have learned businesses out of your primary experiences and where you’re making investments and where you see innovation coming from. The Circular Economy framework is new for all of us. And how did you navigate that??
Looney:?Well it’s a great question, Ellen. Yes, I am an upstream guy. Maybe more accurately, I’m actually a driller. I helped drill wells in the Gulf of Mexico, I helped drill wells in Alaska, in the North?Sea . And so my real profession is I’m a drilling engineer. And one of the things that I think we’ve all learned is that it’s important to be curious, to want to learn, to be open minded. I do worry that in the world today, we’re more interested in our position, than we are in a result, and I think I would I would love if we were more interested in a result. How do we get emissions down, as opposed to I don’t like oil and gas or whatever your particular position may be. Let’s focus on the objective. For me, we want to grow our company. That’s what this strategy is about. We want to help society solve the energy trilemma. And of course, there are new areas that we have to get into.?
And I have to tell you, Ellen, that as we’ve gotten into some of these new areas, I’m more excited than ever. about the possibility. Because people say to us a lot of time, how can this company who’s been doing this old business for 100 years have any relevance in this new world? Let me give you a few quick examples if I could, let’s say you, Alan, and I wanted to start an EV charging company tomorrow, the number one issue we’re going to have is access to land. Five hundred and fifty million people live within 20 minutes of a BP site. Why wouldn’t we use that??
Murray:?There is synergy.?
Looney:?There’s huge synergy. There’s huge advantage. If I want to, Alan, if I want to give you another example. If you and I want to start, and Ellen, we’ll make her the CEO.
McGirt:?Thank you.?
Looney:?If the three of us want to start a sustainable aviation fuel company tomorrow, right? This is the way you’re going to decarbonize aviation in the next 20 years: you’re going to need to do three things. You need to get feedstock, number one, the hardest part of the job. BP has got one of the largest trading organizations in the world. We traded commodities for decades. We’ve just done a 10 year deal with a company called Nuseed to grow a crop called carinata, which is a non food crop that farmers can grow between seasons. We can do that, because we have a trading house. The second thing we’ll have to do is build a plant. We’ll have to build a plant. We have decades of experience of building plants. We do it on time, on budget, project management is in our core. So we’ll do it and we’ll build it next to our refinery so it’s going to be cheaper than what we can [hard to hear]. And the final thing, final, is you’re going to have to sell that product. You’re going have to sell it and the three of us are going to get on?Google ?and find out who the CEO of Continental Airlines is, or whatever your favorite airline is. BP is in 700 airports globally. We’re in 70 countries, we already have the infrastructure at the airports. We have decades-long relationships with every airline in the world, every provider. So you look at it and you think oh my god, why wouldn’t you use that innate capability and help the world transition?
Murray:?Ellen? I think it’s pretty clear you and I should not get into this business and should leave it to BP.
McGirt:?I am jumping in with both feet with McMurray industries. I cannot be stopped. I am the CEO now.?
Murray:?I’ve been waiting for this. I knew this moment would come.?
Here’s the follow up question. I want to talk about investors because under Delaware law, you’re still responsible to investors. And investors are fairly simple-minded people, right? And what we see in the marketplace right now is that they reward pure plays than BP. Exxon?Chevron ?are doing much less in terms of alternatives than you are. But they’re trading at much higher multiples as a result, because they’re seen as oil and gas companies.?Tesla ?100%, pure new economy, ridiculously high multiples. You’re a mixed message. Yeah, we’re doing both. We’re doing them equally. We’re doing and, and your investors don’t seem to be rewarding that approach. What do you do about that? You’re here in New York to talk to investors. What do you say?
Looney:?We focus on delivery. We’re three years in, Alan. Year one was about setting a new direction for the company. That’s done. Year two was about change and restructuring. That’s done. Year three was about delivery. And every day and every week from now on is about delivery. There are strong returns to be made in the transition. The transition does not equal low returns. Look at biogas—15 plus percent returns. Biofuels—15 plus percent returns. EV charging, the same. Hydrogen, double digit. So we have to make sure that we, as you quite rightly say, deliver for the owners of the company who are putting their trust and their faith in us to make sure that we give them an economic return. And I am convinced that if we deliver on the plans that we laid out, which involved a huge increase in our EBITDA projections for 2030, yesterday. Eighteen percent return on average capital employed in 2030. We will get there.
Murray:?Just to break that down, how long will it take you to make the kind of returns on your alternatives portfolio that you made last year on your oil and gas portfolio? Will you ever make those kinds of returns?
Looney:?In terms of returns, it all depends on what the price of the other product is. So people say to me, so in our five transition growth engines, we’re going to deliver about 10 to $12 billion of EBITDA in 2030 in high-growth sectors that will continue to grow into the 2030s. That’s up from about 1.5 billion in those five businesses today. One point five to ten to 12. People say, but you’re making 50 billion as a company, so it’s still only 25% or 20% of your company. The honest answer to that question, Alan, is what’s the price of oil going to be in 2030. If the price of oil is low, it might be 50% of our earnings. If the price of oil is high, it might be less than 20%. But what we are doing is investing in businesses that have huge growth potential. And no matter how we look at it, oil and gas isn’t going to be growing at double digit per annum growth rates every year for the next 20 years. But biogas is, sustainable aviation fuel is, EV charging is. So we’re in high-growth sectors where we have real incumbent advantage and the returns are strong.
Murray:?Yeah, just one more follow up. There is a group of people out there who say, well, okay, if it depends on the price of oil, how your renewable sector does, then why are you growing production of oil? Why not let the price reduce demand and provide the alternative?
Looney:?Because every government and every country and around the world today is crying out for more investment into today’s energy system so that their populations can achieve what they want, which is secure energy at the flick of a switch and affordable energy, and that’s an oil and gas system. And whether it’s here in the United States, where that call has been made publicly, to drill more wells. In today’s energy system, whether it’s in Europe, whether it’s Germany, going around to?Africa , in the Middle East, looking for energy supplies, this is a reality. We must do both. It is an and conversation, not an or conversation. We believe we’re going to help society in this process. Importantly, we think we’re going to create enormous value for our shareholders in doing so.?
Murray:?And Ellen we have so many and conversations on this podcast. You know, life would be so much simpler if you just had one goal you had to meet.
McGirt:?Like we do with our new EV charger business, which I’m very excited about. [Laughter from all three.]?
Bernard, you said something really notable in one of your early Q&As with your employees, which is in a video I found online. You were talking about the job of the CEO and it struck me as a very?Leadership Next?kind of comment. You said I don’t think people want to work for a hero, an iconic CEO who has all the answers. And the type of person who typically ends up on the cover of business magazines, I have to add, I’m like any other person in the company, a real person with fears and worries and you want to be able to signal that people can connect with you, and that you value them wherever they are in the hierarchy. I’m curious how that leadership approach has played out in the workforce, with retention, with hiring, but also with developing leaders. I think that’s the inclusion piece that’s really important and often gets lost as a company grows and scales rapidly, particularly in an ambitious part of their of their lifecycle. How do you think about succession and developing talent??
Looney:?So look, you know, maybe it’s a little bit about my upbringing, I remember when I joined BP from Ireland, my mother asked me when I came home one weekend, if, if they minded that I was Irish.
McGirt:?My mother asked me that too. But when I told her I was going to talk to you, she asked me that too. It’s so interesting.?
Looney:?This stuff is subtle, but for her that was a question that she had to ask. Now, you know, I couldn’t have joined a better company in some ways. And I guess I’m the, you know, where I got to today shows that it’s a company where opportunities are dished out, regardless of where you come from and so on so forth. Therefore, I have an enormous personal, if I get I try not to get upset, but if I do get upset about things, it’s where things are not fair, or there’s not a level playing field. You know, I just want people to be able to progress based on merit. You know, I always say to people, you know, work hard make a difference treat people well, that’s that’s been my thing that I’ve tried to do. And I want people who do that to have the best opportunities in life, and, you know, whether it’s whether it’s women, or whether it’s sexuality, or race or whatever, you know, the reality is that hasn’t been true in the world over the last 20 or 30 years. I’ve got four main businesses in BP today. Three of them are run by women. I’ve got a team of 12 people, more than half are women, on my leadership team, that’s in our sector. In any sector, I think that’s unusual. And they’re not in those jobs because they’re women. They’re in those jobs because they are the best people for the job. All I have to do, and all I must do is make sure that the processes are fair, so that the best people get the right opportunity. That’s all I want, whoever gets the job gets the job. But I’m really proud of of those women, as I am the guys on the team as well.?
So we are about fairness, we’re about a meritocracy, as best we can, we’re doing all of that. We reinvented our company, restructured it in 2021 in the middle of the pandemic. We took every job in the company and put it up for grabs. So it didn’t matter that you’ve been in your job for 20 years, and you wanted to see see yourself out in the next 10 years because you may be blocking, in many cases, young women from getting those opportunities. So this is huge for me.?
In terms of mental health, we spoke a lot about it, you alluded to it. I want to create as healty a workforce as I can. And mental health is a huge issue in the world today. And as I said in that video, I deal with issues in my life. I bet Alan has issues in his life. I bet you’ve got issues, whether it’s parents with cancer, whether it’s children growing up, whether it’s financial issues, relationship, you know, people have got stuff to deal with. And if we can create an environment where it’s okay to talk about those, because we all know that a problem shared is a problem halved, that, to me is the biggest thing. So me talking about stuff that I worry about, hopefully lets people see, well, if the CEO can talk about that stuff, maybe I can. And that’s all we’re trying to do.
Murray:?You’re articulating a really interesting theory of leadership. Where does it come??
Looney:?Not sure it’s that.
Murray:?Give us the Bernard Looney roots here. You’re probably a different leader than many of your predecessors or many other people in your industry or in the business world. Where do your notions of how to do this come from?
Looney:?I’m just trying my best. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes, trust me. So I don’t want in any way to suggest that this is how people should lead. This is just how I lead. I grew up in a farm in the west of Ireland. I was the youngest of five. And my mother had a big influence on me. She wanted a better life for her children.?
I had the opportunity to go to university. The reason being that there were grants available from college or from government, not scholarships, I would had grants and and I was able to get to the school. And I remember my father before he died, on his deathbed he asked me, are you in London now? And I said, yes, I’m in London. And he said, is your is your job sitting down? And I said, yeah, I guess it is. And I asked my brother, I said, what did he mean by that? And he said that farmers couldn’t believe in the 1950s when office work came in, that you could actually get paid to do a job where you sat all day, which makes total sense. If you’re a farmer and your entire life, and your livelihood is made out of working with your hands all day, every day, seven days a week. No stop, right. We had 14 cows, dairy farm. I just feel very fortunate to have the opportunity that I have today and I just want other people to have that opportunity. And at the end of the day, it’s about how we treat each other, you know. And as I say, I’m not perfect, but you know, I have a strong, deep desire to treat people with respect, put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, try to look at things from their perspective, you know, this arrogant, egotistical, heroic person who knows the answer to everything.
Murray:?I think we know some of those.
Looney:?And I’ve known some too.?
McGirt:?They’re our base, Alan.?
Looney:?But that’s why we chose Ellen as our CEO, she’s not going to be like that. But personally, I think that style of leadership can, it can be very successful. It can be very successful and when things are going well, it looks fantastic. But it’s risky. Because at the end of the day, you got to know what’s going on in your organization to be able to lead it. You’ve got to be able to have people bring you bad news and be able to tell you when you’re not getting things right or when you’ve got something wrong or when something’s going wrong in the company. If there’s a culture where everything has to be perfect and everything has to be right, then I’m afraid you can end up leading blind and that’s very, very difficult.
Murray:?The one thing I would say from a historical perspective, I’m not sure you can lead that way successfully today, maybe you could have 20-30…?
Looney:?Certainly not in the long run, Alan. And you can, in my words, you can get away with it for a period of time, but it’s not a long term. It’s not a long term success game.
McGirt:?That was wonderful, Bernard. Thank you so much for letting us dig into your leadership philosophy and your past, it was very inspiring. I wanted to end with a question about leaning into opportunity and innovation when things are hard. Three years ago, four years ago, the primary conversation as you had identified was around cleaner energy, low carbon energy. And today, given all the things that are happening in the world, there is also a big conversation around energy security and energy affordability, and you are navigating that. I’m curious, you’re in a very specific business, but that is the kinds of tension that anybody who has a transformational mindset has to deal with when they want to tackle a big social problem. And it doesn’t really matter what the what the problem is: that there’s a tension between what people really need right now, and how to get to the future. I was wondering if you could share some just general points of view about how to lean into that tension from an organizational point of view and mine as best you can the opportunities while navigating the risks.
Looney:?You have to be guided by your purpose. To give you an example, we were in Russia for over 20 years, and the invasion of Ukraine started, and within 96 hours, we had made the decision to pull out of Russia. And we were the first company in the world, I think, to do so and we had the largest financial impact of any company. We wrote off $25 billion dollars overnight, we lost 1.1 million barrels a day, overnight. And we made that decision because it was the right thing to do and it was the right value decision. So it was a values-based decision and it was a value-based decision. So I think we always have to be guided by what our purpose is and that is the thing that anchors us. You know, it may sound corny, but I love BP. Okay, I love the company. It has given me a life I could never have dreamed of. And I have this very special kind of relationship with it for that reason. And I want to help society and I also want to help BP win. And our people, if you meet them that work for us around the world, are the most amazing people. I want them to work for a winning company.
Murray:?Bernard Looney, and we’ll give you both names. Great conversation, inspiring conversation. Keep fighting the fight. Thank you so much.?
Looney:?Thanks for having me on. Thank you so much, guys. Thank you.
Murray:?Leadership Next?is edited by Alexis Haut. It’s written by me, Alan Murray, along with my amazing colleagues Ellen McGirt, Alexis Haut, and Megan Arnold. Our theme is by Jason Snell. Our executive producer is Megan Arnold.?Leadership Next?is a production of?Fortune Media .?Leadership Next?is a production of?Fortune Media .?Leadership Next?episodes are produced by?Fortune‘s editorial team.
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1 年Is energy poverty our future?