BP CEO Dudley's Ability to Overhaul BP Uncertain: Author to Platts Energy Week
Washington - November 29, 2010
TV show also addressed power price drop & geothermal energy outlook
BP CEO Bob Dudley's lengthy career with the major oil company may make it difficult for him to provide "an outsider's perspective" necessary to help BP recover from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and other disasters at company facilities, the author of a new book on BP said Sunday on the all-energy news and talk program Platts Energy Week television.
Loren Steffy, a Houston Chronicle business columnist who wrote "Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of Profit," said while Dudley is considered "a very different kind of CEO" than his predecessor, Tony Hayward, Dudley may be hindered by his decades of work at BP and Amoco, which BP acquired in 1998.
"It's not clear if he brings enough of an outsider's perspective to get the company of change," Steffy said on the all-energy news TV program Platts Energy Week. Click here to watch the full interview.
"Tony Hayward said much the same thing when he came in as CEO, and I think Tony did see what the problems were and did have an idea of what needed to be done," Steffy added. "But it's very difficult to change the culture of a company as large as BP and with the history, having [once] been a government-owned company."
Dudley succeeds Hayward as BP's CEO on October 1.
Steffy's book, published by The McGraw-Hill Companies, the parent of Platts, is scheduled to be released this week.
The book traces a series of mishaps involving BP facilities before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig at the company's Macondo well in April, and the subsequent oil spill in the gulf. Those incidents, which Steffy attributes to cost-cutting and mismanagement, include an explosion at a Texas City, Texas, oil refinery in 2005 that killed 15 persons and injured more than 170 others, and problems with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and Thunder Horse drilling platform in the gulf.
"Too many of the investigations ongoing right now look at this as one incident in and of itself," Steffy said of the Deepwater Horizon explosion. "And really there's a pattern we've seen with BP's global operations going back really almost a decade."
Steffy said anger with BP continues in the oil industry, especially in Houston, where BP and other companies maintain large corporate operations. "There's a lot of frustration in the oil and gas industry in Houston. They feel like they kind of got caught up in someone else's mistake," he said.
"This whole process has injected an incredible amount of uncertainty into an area that the oil industry saw as being one of the easiest places to work: the Gulf of Mexico," he added. "It's in US waters. You're dealing with the US government. It's very stable. The fields are very lucrative. And so this is really a prime place to drill. And now there's a lot of political risk injected into the process, and that's going to mean a lot more cost."
In a program segment highlighting the challenges for power providers, Loveless spoke with John Shelk, president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, about the recent drop in wholesale power prices and a Standard and Poor’s report that says the shale gas boom is taking its toll on electricity suppliers and may harm their credit profiles. Click here to view the John Shelk interview.
Also on Sunday’s program, a discussion of whether there is new steam for geothermal energy. Karl Gawell, executive director of the Geothermal Energy Association, talked with Loveless about the anticipated 2011 rebound in the sector’s capacity following this year’s decline. Click here to access the Karl Gawell interview.
To hear Sunday’s “Market Spotlight,” where Bill Loveless discusses the global government debate of economical power plant building with natural gas or renewable fuels, specifically in the U.K. Click here to watch the full clip. Platts Energy Week welcomes viewer comment.
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