BP

When the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest marine oil spill in history, BP faced a crisis of existential proportions. CEO Tony Hayward's mismanaged response — lowballing the leak rate by a factor of fifty or more, blaming contractors, and uttering 'I'd like my life back' while oil still gushed — became the textbook case of how not to lead through a crisis. What the fuller record shows is more precise than the myth on either side: BP paid a record-setting bill and its stock lost more than half its value at the worst of it, but the company survived intact — and it was BP's reputation, not its balance sheet, that never fully recovered.

In 2020 BP vowed to 'fundamentally transform' from an oil company into a clean-energy one. Five years later it raised oil-and-gas spending to ~$10bn/year, called its own faith in the transition 'misplaced,' and still trades at ~$85bn against Exxon's ~$500bn.

An explosion killed 11 workers and a court later ruled BP grossly negligent. But the reputational collapse came from what BP said next: a flow rate it low-balled to ~1,000 barrels a day when the truth was around 62,000.

In February 2025 BP scrapped its 50 GW renewables target and tripled oil-and-gas spend to ~$10 billion a year. It looks like a fresh reset. It's the third lap of the same loop — green slogan, market pressure, retreat to the barrel.