Word: bp
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...knew about the misdeeds? How much did they know? The affair that Britons were dubbing "Oilgate" threatened to reach into the highest places. At issue was whether ministers of the Crown in the years following Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 were aware that British Petroleum (BP) and London-based Shell International were helping to supply oil to that outlaw colony in defiance of British statute and U.N. sanctions...
...government, raised operating profits 6% in 1977, but capital-gains taxes cut total net about 10%, to $531 million. In this year's first quarter, its earnings fell 44%, the probably temporary result of lower prices for North Sea crude and of marketing losses in Continental Europe. BP, which has total operating freedom from the politicians in Whitehall, has long emphasized crude production over marketing. The company produces the "blackest" barrel of oil in Europe-that with the largest proportion of low-profit heavy fuel-and early this year closed its biggest refinery, in Rotterdam, for two months because...
...touched off in London by reports that British Petroleum had discovered a potentially huge field. It is in a lightly explored region 30 miles west of the Shetland Islands, which are off the Scottish coast and far distant from Brit" ain's already rich North Sea fields. BP, which shares the site with Chevron, Imperial Chemical Industries and the British National Oil Corp., confirmed that it had hit oil but reported that it did not know how much...
Under a tacit agreement, the British government has left BP's managers free to go their own way, even when they have strained politicians' patience. During the 1973 Arab oil embargo, BP diverted shipments of Middle Eastern crude away from Britain, where prices were under government control, to Germany, where the market was free. The same year, BP pulled out of the unprofitable Italian market, with never a word from Whitehall about what that would do to Common Market solidarity...
Thus sale of part of the government's interest probably will make little or no difference in the way BP operates. Why, then, is the left wing so angry? Because the sale violates socialist ideology, which calls for the nationalization of more, not less, of British industry. The relative success of BP also dramatizes the value of letting proficient managers alone. Any attention focused on BP inevitably brings to mind the contrasting inefficiency of businesses controlled by the government in fact as well as name, such as the National Coal Board and the British Steel Corp...