BP’s green image in serious jeopardy
Company’s worked hard to be seen as environmentally friendly
NEW YORK – BP brands itself a friend of the environment, an energy company that goes “beyond petroleum.”
That image, worth billions of dollars, is being sullied by the company’s inability to contain a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
As the expanding oil slick threatens marshlands and wildlife along the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi, BP faces perhaps the biggest public relations challenge an oil company has experienced in the U.S. since the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989.
BP’s environmentally friendly image – its logo is a green and yellow sunburst – has outlasted past accidents, including a Texas refinery blast and Alaska pipeline spill. But last week’s deadly explosion on an oil rig that BP hired and the looming environmental damage are shaping up to be a major problem, experts said.
Since the accident, BP’s stock market value has declined by roughly $25 billion.
Marketing experts and environmentalists say BP’s response so far has been superior to Exxon’s treatment of the Valdez crash. BP devoted most of its home page on its website to the disaster, and it’s held regular news conferences.
But it’s had some slips. Most notably, BP appeared to initially downplay the extent of the oil spill. It estimated that 1,000 barrels of oil were seeping from the seabed each day. The government later corrected that figure to five times as much.
In addition, local officials in communities in the path of the spill have expressed frustration with the lack of communication from BP officials, as well as the government.
“They have to repair the problem. I’m not sure if anything else is going to matter until they do,” said Kelly O’Keefe, managing director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Brandcenter. “And they should apologize.”
BP says it’s not focusing on its public relations effort.
“It’s about tackling an oil spill as aggressively as we can,” said Robert Wine, a spokesman at BP’s headquarters in London.
Eileen Campbell, chief executive of market research company Millward Brown, said BP risks becoming associated with photos of oil-soaked wildlife.
That would stand in stark contrast to the green image that BP took years to build. The company has invested in solar and wind energy projects. It devoted $500 million to biofuels research, and CEO Tony Hayward supports capping carbon emissions. It spent nearly $76 million in the United States on radio and TV last year, according to Kantar Media.
Altogether, the company’s efforts have contributed to a brand name worth about $17.3 billion, according to the marketing firm Millward Brown.
BP is considered the most environmentally friendly of major oil companies, the firm said.
In the grand scheme, BP hasn’t gone much beyond its core business of petroleum. Of its $73 billion in revenue in the first quarter, about $72.3 billion of that came from the exploration, production, refining and marketing of oil and natural gas. The rest came from “other businesses” such as solar and wind energy.