It is about time we realized that the big profits, for which we congratulated and rewarded them highly, were much more due to underspending on security and environmental protection and the high oil price.
Little good management was involved!
Onésimo Alvarez-Moro
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The British oil firm is in trouble. But its rivals face many of the same problems
No one calls upon James Baker, an American elder statesman, to solve a trivial problem. George Bush recruited him to defend his interests in Florida during the disputed election of 2000, and more recently to examine ways out of America's morass in Iraq. The United Nations once asked him to settle a 30-year-old conflict in Africa. So it says a lot about the state of BP, a big British oil firm, that it asked Mr Baker to head a panel to assess flaws in its safety regime.
John Browne, BP's boss, turned to Mr Baker in 2005 after an explosion at one of the firm's American refineries killed 15 people and injured 170 more. Since then BP has suffered a series of further disasters. Last year several of its pipelines in Alaska sprang leaks, briefly forcing the closure of America's biggest oil field and prompting oil prices to jump. BP's trading arm is under investigation for price-fixing. A showcase project at the Thunder Horse oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico has been delayed by a mix of hurricanes and engineering. Last year BP's output declined, and its share price has lagged behind that of rivals such as America's Exxon Mobil (see chart).
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