Research Summary
Research Summary
Papers in progress
Description
- “The ‘Carbon Club’: Oil Companies, Climate Change & the Shaping of Public Policy”. Conspiracy theories abound, but the roles of the major oil companies in influencing public policy on climate change remain largely obscure. This research aims to throw new light on this issue. It examines how in the mid-1990s the oil majors split into two camps. The ‘green’ camp, led by BP, aimed to steer public policy in both the USA and Europe towards business-friendly, market-based emissions trading systems, and away from green taxes and mandatory regulations, which were deeply unpopular with business. This strategy was highly successful in the UK, where the government introduced a BP-style emissions trading system in 2002. The European Union followed suit in 2005. In the USA, the election of George W. Bush brought federal policy much closer to Exxon's ‘anti-green’ position, and while Exxon’s behind-the-scenes influence remains largely opaque, there seems no doubt that Exxon supported Bush's rejection of curbs on GHG emissions and his refusal to countenance the Kyoto Protocol. This research addresses key questions arising from this case of the influence of big business on a crucial area of public policy.
- “What's the Use of a State-Owned Oil Company? Energy Security, Corporate Governance and British Oil Supplies in the Twentieth Century”. This research examines, through a British perspective, the government’s attempt to improve the country’s energy security through state-owned enterprise. It focuses on the governance of BP as a majority state-owned enterprise for most of the twentieth century, particularly during periodic oil supply shortages in which the British Government, despite owning a majority of BP's shares and having Government-appointed directors on BP's board, was unable to enforce its requests for BP to divert extra oil supplies to Britain. The tentative conclusion is that having a majority state-owned oil company made very little, if any, difference to Britain's energy security.
- “Make or Buy? The Outsourcing of R&D and Technology by the Major International Oil Companies”. My research for the latest volume of BP's history pointed to a shift in the location of R&D and technology in the oil and gas industry in the late twentieth century. The once-dominant major oil companies greatly downsized their internal R&D, and turned increasingly to the highly competitive oil service sector which offered a buyers' market for technology. While the majors' outsourcing of technology provision was highly effective in delivering cost savings in the short term, this research addresses the question of whether in the longer term it weakened the majors' technological hold on the industry, and undermined their competitiveness.