BP Walks Away From the Oil Supermajor Model It Helped Create

In the late 1990s, BP Plc boss John Browne used an oil-price slump to usher in the age of the supermajor, buying U.S. rivals Amoco and Arco to create a transatlantic giant. He kicked off a round of mergers that saw his company and four others dominate the industry -- Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. in the U.S., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Total SE in Europe.

That era ended on Tuesday when Bernard Looney, the third chief executive officer since Browne’s swashbuckling reign ended in 2007, declared BP would be a supermajor no more and proposed a ...