Gulf Voices Silenced as BP try their hardest to move on from an awful year
By Matthew Butcher – reporting from inside yesterday’s BP AGM
It hasn’t been the easiest year for BP or their shareholders. First their was the disastrous Deepwater Disaster which killed 11 of its workers and spilled the equivalent of 60 000 barrels of oil into The Gulf of Mexico per day. Then BP cancelled its dividends to shareholders in 2010 and now its deal with Rosneft is looking in jeopardy.
The thing is most people don’t have much sympathy for BP and anyone who attended their AGM today might well understand why. The company, whose tone today surely should have apologetic, refused access to their AGM to a group of oysterman and fisherman who had flown over to tell the board how their lives had been affected by the tragedy in The Gulf of Mexico. As Carl-Henric Svanberg, BPs smooth talking Chairman, spoke of BPs desire to change for the better his hired henchmen refused to allow those whose lives his company had hurt to be heard. As Bob Dudley, CEO, waxed lyrical about the amazing efforts BP had made to rectify their errors those who he claimed to be helping were denied a voice.
But it wasn’t just the residents of The Gulf of Mexico who were angry at BP today. Workers from the GMB union who had been ‘locked out’ of work by BP in Hull waved their banners as shareholders made their way into the AGM. Art Not Oil campaigners, who are campaigning to stop BP sponsoring art exhibitions, held banners outside The Excel Centre. Members of The UK Tar Sands Network, as well as eloquent First Nations representatives, made their impassioned cases both inside and out of the AGM. Some were dragged out of the main hall after revealing a human banner reading ‘No Tar Sands’ while Clayton Thomas-Muller and his colleagues informed shareholders of the immense damage that BP’s ‘In-Situ’ oil sands extraction was having on the lives and environment of first nation communities in Alberta, Canada.
It isn’t just activists who are angry at BP. Investors from across the globe joined together to vote against or abstain in key votes at today’s AGM. Around 43% of shareholders, an extraordinarily high number in the AGM world, refused to back the Chairman of the Safety Committee William Castell. Julie Tanner, from Christian Brothers Investment Services, told the board of directors that they simply hadn’t made enough efforts to improve safety after Deepwater to have the trust of shareholders.
The effects of all of this anger would, you might think, make BP stop and think about they way they are doing business. When fisherman tell you that their lives are ruined, indigenous people explain to you that your company is trampling on their ancient traditions and your own investors are worried about risk taking you would have thought that the BP board might be shaken. But they weren’t. Instead they insisted that Deepwater was the fault of ‘multi agency failure’, that the estuaries in Louisiana were ‘dead before the spill’ and that any industry brings with it certain amounts of destruction as in Alberta. The company that rebranded themselves as ‘Beyond Petroleum’ said that “[Their] 2030 outlook is based on supply and demand trends and [they] will continue to rely on fossil fuels”.
Next year BP may well be in a better position for its shareholders. It may well have had a year in which their was no major oil spill and they may well have signed a deal to start working in Russia but they have a huge task ahead if they are to fix their tarnished reputation. Bob Dudley might say that ‘BP is a different company from last year’ but, as I sat inside their AGM today and Gulf coast fisherman were locked out, I couldn’t help but sense the hollowness in his words.
Yeah, well, good article.
Here’s what I intend to do about it.
https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=202969593069479
and here’s my insiders view of the historically illegitimate AGM
Much has been written about what happened outside and on the way into the meeting but what about on the inside? What was discussed? Well it might be interesting to get an insider’s view. I was sitting in the front. Here goes.
The group in good spirits after getting up very early.
So at about 11:30, exactly 31 minutes late, the ominous corporate Jazz Guitar music wafted through the ExCel Centre Hall as 6,000 people took their seats. The average age is 90, but let’s not hear age discrimination here. The front row is reserved and security guards with the bp logo as a metal badge on their black suit and blue tie, stand in a row protecting there balls like the goal is the stage. “Here they come” says my bearded buddy, who is sitting to my right.
The heavies take their seats in the front row and I feel nerves, but not as badly as my bearded buddy, for a reason I won’t go into. There is no applause as the directors take their seats and the chairman is the last one standing. His name is Carl-Henric Svanberg, and there is a label just in case there is any doubt. There are 1 or 2 women on the platform, including a sign language enterpreter. Speaches go on for half an hour, with applause for “It is traditional to pay tribute to the outgoing executive. We wish Tony Hayward well…”. Shareholders seem to think he should have his life back. The speeches go as far as “consistently found seafood safe” which makes me think of the baby brown shrimp and proceeds to suck the energy out of me. I check my twitter, which is a bit delayed, and tweet something about lunch but decide it’s premature to send it. There is a tweet from the press-conference which was a big success. Apparently the anti-oil lady from Louisiana was barred from the meeting, which is a shock. I would like to ask a question about this. (To hear the truth about the latest Mexican gulf disaster, please search for the “dirty cajuns” on YouTube.) As the CEO does his powerpoint presentation about the company, my stomache rumbles. I am hungry for much more than my huge profits! The next bit is a bit like question time with Carl picking the questions, which come from 4 well-lit microphones, A, B, C, and D.
12 Noon
“We must achieve long term value for you, our shareholders. And of course we can’t do it alone… that we build on the….” I think the word future is taboo. The mention of short term capital gains and dividend makes the old lady in front of me nod her curly head. “In the hydrocarbons business there will always be risks” says Carl-Henric.
Q1 comes from John Benstead, a bit of a belated valentine message “to Bob Dudley, the CEO. Tony Haywood mentioned the importance of chemistry. There have been etc. etc.” Answer bang back from Carl “I’m a Chemical Engineer”. He goes on to talk about taking cement chemistry in-house. What a shame, I think, that chemical engineers include oilmen because I would like a career in that.
Q2 comes from someone who says her org has 35 million shares, and is leading a revolt against this year’s annual report, which you can read about in your own time on the FairPensions website and so on. I calculate on my CityAM newspaper advert for BP that means that they’re trading on the LSE at $350 million. Imagine how much renewable energy future that could buy the world! She had a question about experts and argues that just as an independent fund was created to pay out the $20bn in the gulf, wouldn’t it be great if there was an independent organisation to implement the 26 points recommended by the safety review. Carl responded by moving on to the next question and taking the risk questions together. Why has BP not appointed an external expert to assess its H&S? That’s a question for the public, the other 364 days of the year.
I look behind me and see Clayton standing there with his pigtails, calm and dignified. The board remember him from last year’s special shareholder resolution. Many of us remember him from Black-heath and many other things. He’s going to be quite active. His territories are effected by hydrocarbon related pollution, and he used the slogan Bloody Oil in an action I was involved with, covered by the BBC and NewInt.org .
Someone comments on twitter that there is a new word in the Gulf – “spillionaire”. The independent newspaper is quite keen on the inequality aspect of BP’s policies.
Someone comments on cement testing.
Someone says “this is good” as a plane roars past.
12:42 I’m watching Lain Conn answer a question and notice his camera shaking, giving me a headache. Some good engineering questions about Flixbrough and Piper Alpha, great examples of “both accidents due to foreign companies”. that’s Mr simons with the sticking out ears, a 45-year serving shareholder. “Are Black rock here? No. How about Legal & General”. Of course therein lies the importance of proxy votes. Bob Dudley responds by giving lip service to “Environmental Responsibility”. What fun.
12:55 “What is the board’s response to the report that they (Transocean, http://www.independent.co.uk/ ) awarded a design award to the designer of that rig that caused the gulf accident”. The answer was funny imho. Bob Dudley proceeded to lecture a media-savvy British audience about the Irony of its timing. The BP-sympathetic questioner comes back with stressing the importance of “not only what they do but what they are perceived to do.”
13:00
Clayton draws his bow and aims his question in defense of his National territory, “welcome the opportunity to address shareholders and directors” he says that the company’s tar sands exploration is being “touted as cleaner”. Whilst we hear big lies coming about SAG-D, a project most people don’t know about. He asks about p74 of the annual report, a document which we now learn a massive 15% of shareholders voted against this year.
An Indian man started talking about Bhopal and we listened him out, then my bearded buddy got bored and suggested we walk out and see where the others had been dragged to.
For Lunch, we got a nice leaf-decorated hamper with optional Red or White Australian wine, bottled water, Walker’s crisps (ready salted), apple, choc muffin, and a sandwich.
Having invested so much in BP, I hope that all being well BP will continue to exist, and continue to stop & search activists and force them to sign consent forms. Next year, there’ll be a Bike hire docking station, so no more messing around with DLR.