There are a number of useful comments I can make, because I have a pretty good idea how a company the size of BP works.
I'm reminded of the time when I was a banker (VP of Marketing) developing what later became the modern corporate cash management systems, universally used. I had interviewed at least 30 of the treasurers of top U.S. corporations. I came back from a trip and asked a Senior VP of my bank whether I should mention to anyone that I could save General Motors $40 million with better banking and no disruption of any department. He said wisely: 'Michael, $40 million will never be of interest to anyone in top management... they only look at figures in the billions.)
On that subject, BP has revenue of a quarter of a trillion dollars a year and employs 80,000 people. You can compare that to the GDP of Norway or Denmark, countries with millions of citizens. You can compare it to the sales to the world by Mexico, Spain or Saudi Arabia.
I doubt that anyone in top management could pay attention to a decision with a figure under $5 billion. A top manager couldn't find someone to talk with him or her (several women in top management) about something so small. Creating a fund of $20 billion could be approved by any one member of top management. It is a trivial number looked at over several years. Oil companies work with horizons of 10-20 years.
Three things to know about oil companies. Henry Mintzberg has shown, in his early work, that oil company top management only gets gross information such as: 'how stable is Iran?', 'what is the future of natural gas in the world?', and 'what are BP's relations with China?'.
No single person runs a
large oil company (there have been one or two exceptions). All
decisions take 3 to 5 top managers to agree, if the issue is a top
management issue in the first place.
The decisions about a single oil well in the Gulf of Mexico have been split up and delegated far down a chain of command. Andy Inglis is chief executive of exploration and production. He is an engineer, a member of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was preceded in his current job by Tony Hayward the current CEO (and political flack catcher).
Inglis has several people under him who deal with either exploration or production. The Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf is probably in both areas of responsibility. Under these top managers are regional managers and whole chains of command in both engineering, finance, safety and operations. The same is true at the local level in the Gulf. Within the Gulf there are probably sectional management chains of command for every one of these components plus personnel. There are probably 5 managers on the drilling rig, each with a chain of command above and below. This is a very hierarchical company, decisions under $50 million are very local never getting to a regional manager.
Top management of BP is poorly paid. The highest paid manager is Byron Grote the chief financial officer at $4 million per year plus stock. This is less than the earnings of the top five managers at every American utility company; tiny companies by comp0arison with revenues and risks that are 5% the size of BP.BP is the creation of John D. Rockefeller. John D.s company was split up by 1911, a decade after he retired. He designed one hell of a brilliant and efficient company. One of the split off companies, Standard Oil of Ohio kept growing and buying other less productive oil companies until, a century later, it became the current BP. Oil companies have to be big so they can stand up to nations, most of which are run by tyrants, including the current temporary occupant of the White House.
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PS: For a correction on the relationship of BP to Standard Oil see the comment below.