When BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, said he would cut the oil giant’s dividend in half earlier this month, he might have expected a backlash from the pension funds that rely on the £1.6bn quarterly payout. In the event, it caused little more than a ripple of interest. Nor was much attention paid to BP’s record $17.7bn (£13.5bn) loss, incurred over just three months and which compared with a profit of $1.8bn in the same period a year earlier.
Instead, the headlines were dominated by one of the most dramatic strategy shifts ever announced by a FTSE 100 company. BP, Looney said, would become a “very different energy company” as it increased tenfold its investment in low-carbon energy, while reducing oil and gas output by
