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BP chief executive wants to double the value of the oil Major market within five years to $ 200 billion, the level he reached before the Detepwater Horizon 2010 catastrophe.
Murray Auchincloss told Financial Times that BP would benefit from “extraordinary” oil and gas demand after this week, abandoning a plan to recreate itself as a green energy company.
“At the end of the decade, it would be good to go back to where we were in front of Macondo,” Auchincloss said, referring to the name of the good oil that exploded, causing one of the worst spills of all time and leaving BP with a 62.5bn $ cleaning bill.
He spoke a day after the BP, whose current market value is only below 70bn £ (89bn $), shorten its annual renewable expenses by 70 percent and returned to its essential oil and gas business.
The plan, which has received a lukewarm reception from the market, is an Acknowledgment from the BP that the power transition is moving much slower than expected.
“The oil and gas demand will be around for a long time,” Auchincloss said when asked what BP would look like after 2050. “There will still be extraordinary amounts of demand for it.”
He said the increased demands of electricity of the data would make gas, in particular, the fuel of the choice. “The challenge is how we declare these things as much as you can,” he said, adding that the BP was already actively capturing carbon emissions.
While Auchincloss has fallen all the objectives to renewable and wants to move the PB wind and solar weapons from the company’s balance sheet, he said these would still be “very big” businesses.
BP has been criticized for moving very slowly to implement its strategy, but Auchincloss said he had no regret for his first year as a permanent chief executive. “Nothing comes to mind,” he said.
“You do not announce a change of strategy until you change it,” he said, adding that if he had announced such a bold pivot before any basic work came, the market would not believe it.
BP has been under pressure to improve its performance, especially after it appeared earlier this month that investor activist Elliott had built a 5 percent close share in the company and was pressuring for changes.
A person acquainted with Elliott’s thinking said Thursday that the company’s plans did not go so far as they previously sought for large shifts and costs of renewable energy. Bloomberg reported for the first time the defense fund’s dissatisfaction with the new strategy.
Auchincloss refused to comment on whether he had had any interaction with the New York -based defensive fund.
Auchincloss admitted that the BP would suffer some short -term financial pain after replenishing its oil and gas project pipeline after years of reducing its portfolio. But he said he would focus on promoting the company to US investors and said most of the PB growth would come from the US and the Middle East.
“We are more American than a terrible amount of US companies,” he said.
“I am really focusing on American investors and telling them how attractive we are about their internal opportunities in countries,” he said, adding that the management team would speak with more than a third of BP shareholders on the roads in the coming weeks.
He said, however, that the movement of the company’s List in the SH.BA was not “on the agenda”.
Auchincloss also defended BP against criticism that it is less valuable, as a oil and gas company than its peers like Exxonmobil and Chevron, who have market capitalizations respectively $ 481 billion and $ 279 billion.
“Our size is smaller, but the quality of our assets is extremely high,” he said, before restoring a list of oil and gas fields that he said were the envy of the industry.
“Upstream is absolutely world -class and is the envy of other corporations. We have a very, very, very well -integrated position that enables trading. And US companies have no trade. They would love it. We compete head -in -head, which is twice our size (from market capitalization).”
