BP’s Crisis Marks the Tombstone for Big Oil’s Green Pivot

The chief executive of BP Plc oozed confidence as he strode out onto a Houston stage in 2023 to tell an audience of fellow oil executives that he no longer ran an oil company.

“I lived in America long enough to know that when you’re getting an electric F-150, the world is going electric,” Bernard Looney, then in his fourth year running the company, told the attendees at CERAWeek by S&P Global, one of the world’s premiere oil conferences. “Our strategy is to transform BP from an international oil company to an integrated energy company.”

Two years later, Looney ...