15.10.2008
BP’s attempt to recruit Oxford grad­u­ates at the uber-swanky Ran­dolph Hotel last night did­n’t quite go accord­ing to plan…

It must have seemed so straight­for­ward to BP. Book the swanky Ball­room at the Ran­dolph Hotel in Oxford, pre­pare a swish pre­sen­ta­tion, lay on the wine and canapes and watch the Oxford grad­u­ates come flock­ing in. A great oppor­tu­ni­ty to drain a few more well-edu­cat­ed brains into their evil oil empire, sor­ry, their “quest for the ener­gy of the future”.

It did­n’t quite work out that way, how­ev­er.

First, the 100-odd atten­dees were met by a ban­ner out­side the hotel, remind­ing them that BP is, always has been, and always will be a cli­mate-cook­ing fos­sil fuel com­pa­ny. Every­one received a leaflet and a few friend­ly words about BP’s less salu­bri­ous activ­i­ties around the world.

Once every­one had filed in and found a seat beneath the chan­de­liers, a tall, fair, shiny BP PR rep called Adam took the stage. He bare­ly had a chance to intro­duce him­self before two audi­ence mem­bers strolled onto the plat­form and told the crowd that actu­al­ly, they had a five minute pre­sen­ta­tion about BP that they’d like to give first.

A friend­ly dis­cus­sion ensued, with Adam ramp­ing up his smarmy charm to the max, insist­ing that he “real­ly want­ed to hear” what the pair had to say but that he real­ly ought to give his 10-minute BP spiel first. The crowd were get­ting rest­less so even­tu­al­ly the tena­cious two agreed to let him speak, so long as they got their slot after­wards.

Poor Adam. He did his best to get through his ten min­utes of cud­dly cor­po­rate Pow­er­point slides, but was clear­ly thrown off his game, sweat­ing and stum­bling over his words, insist­ing that he cared about the envi­ron­ment (“I love the coun­try­side”) and that was why he had joined an equal­ly car­ing com­pa­ny like BP. The most excru­ci­at­ing part was watch­ing him put up slides about careers in oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing, and try­ing to crow­bar in pre-emp­tive stuff about the envi­ron­ment and “alter­na­tive ener­gy” that clear­ly weren’t part of the orig­i­nal plan. He was­n’t helped by anoth­er out­spo­ken audi­ence mem­ber who asked him, mid-spiel, why BP had spent more mon­ey on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get.

Adam rushed through his last few slides, and then it was the turn of the two intre­pid stage-invaders. They launched into a calm, pro­fes­sion­al and utter­ly con­vinc­ing expla­na­tion of what BP was up to around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies aren’t part of the solu­tion to cli­mate change, and why the assem­bled grad­u­ates real­ly ought to con­sid­er an alter­na­tive career. No soon­er had they fin­ished than a mem­ber of the Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign appeared at the podi­um. Despite Adam’s flus­tered requests for him not to speak, he launched into a pow­er­ful first-hand account of BP’s activ­i­ties in Colom­bia – their com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, the crush­ing of peace­ful social move­ments, and the fund­ing and train­ing of death squads. The room lis­tened in awed silence, and applaud­ed at the end.

Adam’s Blair-like facade of rea­son­able­ness was pret­ty stretched at this point, but he still man­aged to say some­thing bare-faced like “that’s why it’s so excit­ing to work at BP – we need to get to grips with all these dif­fi­cult chal­lenges”, before ask­ing two new BP recruits from the grad­u­ate pro­gramme to stand up and talk about their expe­ri­ences.

As these two poor stooges rat­tled hasti­ly through their pre­pared talks, all was not well in the audi­ence. Loud argu­ments seemed to be break­ing out in scat­tered points through­out the crowd, about why on earth they were at an event spon­sored by such a dread­ful com­pa­ny. One after anoth­er, all around the audi­ence, angry peo­ple stood up and stormed out (or at least stormed as far as the wine and canape area at the back). Some of them weren’t even activists. Mean­while, the bol­shi­est audi­ence mem­ber was again demand­ing answers from Adam, and one bright spark put his hand up and asked “so, do we get taught how to kill Colom­bians as part of the grad­u­ate train­ing scheme?”

Things were clear­ly not going to plan, but BP still had a card to play – it was time to break up for wine and nib­bles, and a dozen chirpy young BP employ­ees from their var­i­ous divi­sions were ready to min­gle through the crowd and reas­sure every­one that BP was try­ing its best, you know, and it was­n’t real­ly as bad as the nasty activists were say­ing. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there seemed to be as many under­cov­er (or com­plete­ly bla­tant) cam­paign­ers in the crowd as there were BP staff. Every small group seemed to have some­one in it point­ing out the hypocrisy of BP’s green­wash, and how there were so many bet­ter things that grad­u­ates could do with their lives than work for an oil and gas multi­na­tion­al.

BP must have spent thou­sands of pounds on this event. I won­der if they feel like it was mon­ey well spent?

A final thought: E.ON, of Kingsnorth coal-burn­ing “fame”, are cur­rent­ly hold­ing a series of recruit­ment days at uni­ver­si­ties around the coun­try…

http://www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action meets every Mon­day at 7pm at the East Oxford Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

Text of pre­sen­ta­tion giv­en

Beyond Petro­le­um leaflet hand­ed out

TVCA
oxford@climatecamp.org.uk
http://tvca.atspace.com