BBC | In an interview with BBC World Business Report, Follow This founder Mark van Baal reacts to the ousting of BP chairman Albert Manifold, framing it as the latest symptom of a deeper governance failure at the company.
Van Baal explains that shareholders had hoped Manifold would repair BP’s broken climate governance after a clear warning at the AGM — but instead his fellow board members removed him.
Van Baal characterises Manifold’s agenda as a full pivot back to fossil fuels, pursued without consulting shareholders and continuing the previous CEO’s direction once activist investor Elliott took a stake. He points to the strength of the dissatisfaction: two board resolutions were rejected by majorities, and 18% voted against Manifold’s own election — an extraordinary rebuke for an incoming chairman. The decisive misstep, in his view, was Manifold’s refusal of a shareholder resolution co-filed by Follow This and 16 institutional investors.
He sets the episode against a wider pattern of turmoil, noting this is the second consecutive chairman to leave over governance, following the exits of Auchincloss and Bernard Looney. The board’s vague reasons strike Van Baal as evasive; the real issue, he says, is BP refusing to listen to its owners while doubling down on fossil fuels just as demand decline looms.
On timing, Van Baal pushes back against the idea that record profits justify the strategy. Today’s high oil prices are temporary “war prices” from a supply shock tied to the Strait of Hormuz, not the underlying trend. The International Energy Agency expects fossil fuel demand to fall after 2029, driven by electric vehicles and China. To thrive in a declining market, BP must diversify into clean energy, which keeps getting cheaper.
His closing warning is blunt: companies clinging to fossil fuels risk becoming the Kodaks of the 21st century — the firm that invented digital photography, refused to back it, and collapsed.
