British Petroleum

BP (once British Petroleum) is one of the ‘oil majors’. In the aughts, BP tried to rebrand itself  (Links to an external site.) (https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2020/08/04/bps-new-renewables-push-redolent-of-abandoned-beyond-petroleum-rebrand/?sh=7c04af231ceb)  as an environmentally friendly company with interests in clean (non-fossil fuel) energy.  The general consensus is that that didn’t go too well. The Deepwater Horizon disaster  (Links to an external site.) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill)  arguably put that rebranding initiative to rest. BP had to refocus; the disaster is estimated to have cost the company $21b.  BP was in fact the first oil major to recognize, at least publicly, the link between fossil fuels and climate change and to understand that it needed to diversify out of carbon-based energy if it were to survive in the long run.  Now it is trying again to review the document. With the world gradually waking up to the fact that if greenhouse gas emissions are not controlled, the damage to the climate will become irreversible, many governments (though not yet in the US) are beginning to legislate a move away from a carbon-based energy economy to one based on renewables and/or nuclear.  One part of that strategy is the transition from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles.       Consider the downstream side of BP’s business, in particular, gasoline distribution and retailing. Using two analytical frameworks the Resource-Based View and network effects, discuss how well BP might fare in that transition to a carbon-neutral world.