I was interviewed on British radio today and was asked about this idea. Seemed hard to believe: Blair has become a climate activist (see “Tony Blair, Climate Group, and CAP call for strong technology deployment policy driven by a carbon price, innovative financing, and serious technology standards“) — and this is a no-win, resume-destroying job.
But some British pundits are actually proposing this radical solution to BP’s PR woes (see “Tony Blair is the right man to be BP chairman” and “Tony Blair’s Hiring Is Step One in a BP Comeback: Matthew Lynn.”
Why Blair?
“The former British prime minister is a brilliant communicator. They love him in the U.S. He already works for JPMorgan Chase & Co. so it’s not as if he’s particularly fussy about whose payroll he joins. And he was so close to the oil giant during his premiership that the company used to be nicknamed Blair Petroleum.”
Of course, Lynn, a British Bloomberg columnist who seems to have started this notion, has a bunch of implausible ideas for how BP should get out of the mess it created
- Two: Approach Gazprom about a merger…. If they aren’t interested, try PetroChina Co.
- Hire everyone from British American Tobacco Plc and Philip Morris International Inc. who feels like a 50 percent pay raise…. A combination of climate change, rising oil prices, and the environmental hazards involved in extracting the stuff from harder, more dangerous places, mean it will be deeply unpopular. It is certainly in long-term decline. What does that remind you of? The tobacco industry about two decades ago.
But no, he’s serious — see video interview here.
Bottom line: It might be a ‘brilliant’ idea for British Petroleum, but a dumb idea for Blair.
Related Post:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Can any major leader move the oil industry to reinvent its business model of revenue streams dependent on transportation systems based on cars to highly modular hybrid human-electric transit and transport?
The British people, and all who invest in BP, are desperate to turn around the BP stock price and they hope a pretty face will do it. It doesn’t matter who takes a figurehead position the company will continued to do business as usual and continue to suffer the long term consequences of the Gulf tragedy. The stock will turn around when investors think BP is out of financial difficulty and Blair’s smiling face can’t do that.
Dave Davies interviews NYT science reporter Henry Foutain who explains how deepwater drilling is supposed to work — and what may have gone wrong on the Deepwater Horizon.
(audio available after 5 pm edt today)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=13
Tony Blair?
The Mail online:
“The UN chief charged with hunting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq revealed today how he warned Tony Blair none might exist one month before the invasion.
Hans Blix, the UN’s chief weapons inspector, told how he was ‘doubtful’ any WMDs would be found because his team had drawn a total blank.
He spoke to the then Prime Minister in February 2003 and presciently raised the possibility that Britain could invade, for there to be nothing there.
But Mr Blair was ‘convinced’ and brushed off his concerns, Dr Blix – who has not been asked to give evidence to the ongoing Iraq inquiry – said.”
What is this? The Onion? Seriously, is Tony Blair stupid enough to actually do this? I seriously doubt it, and would BP be that (even more) stupid–to hire someone with no experience running an oil company, or working inside one? Surely not.
Blair a climate activist? News to me.
If Blair is a climate activist, I am Lionel Messi.
> Blair is a climate activist and this is a no-win, resume-destroying job.
This presupposes that Blair is sincere about his views on climate – and there was little evidence of that during his tenure as emperor… I mean prime minister.
Blair is almost universally loathed in Britain, so a job at the helm of one of the most universally loathed companies, responsible with the other fossil corporations for raping the Earth, would be rather appropriate for this man.
And it would be rather nice to end the sick joke of having him as the Middle East peace envoy for the UK.
Blair was appointed peace envoy by the UN, not the UK… I don’t think anyone in England would trust him with a political job any more. Oh, and BP is owned by 40% UK investors and 39% US investors, so the whole ‘British’ thing is a bit of a red herring.
Blair is an unwitting chump of the first water who was gulled into a disastrous foreign adventure by George Bush and his troupe of clowns, largely due to his messianic sense of himself. I suppose Blair’s unique combination of gullibility and hubris makes him absolutely spot-on as a figurehead for BP.
Blair’s capacity for telling big lies is the main reason why Britain no longer has a Labour government – the opinion polls dropped when it became clear just how deceitful he and his cronies had been in their PR campaign for the invasion of Iraq, and they never recovered.
Given his talent for spin and play-acting, I think he is precisely the sort of person that BP would want – were it not for the fact that most people in Europe have seen through him. But I’m sure they could get away with putting him in charge of their operations somewhere where they can rely on a media in corporate captivity. Like North America, for example.
Btw, a Monbiot piece worth reading: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/22/british-institutional-investors-sue-bp
I say bring it on. We just need to figure out a way to get him arrested as a war criminal as soon as he arrives…
@Denny – thanks for correction re. UK -> UN. Although, it doesn’t make the joke any less sick. :/ Blair has the blood of hundreds of thousands innocents on his hands – and now he preaches peace, along with his oily religious proselytising. Anything that takes the odious liar out of the public sphere is good by me.