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It's fascinating to me how well Obama's rhetoric following Deepwater Horizon worked - he very deliberately called the company "British Petroleum" where it's nam

It's fascinating to me how well Obama's rhetoric following Deepwater Horizon worked - he very deliberately called the company "British Petroleum" where it's name was actually changed to literally the letters "BP" nine years prior (NB the lower case bp was for logo/branding purposes only) Now whenever you see Americans mention the oil/gas industry they don't seem to mention ExxonMobil, they don't seem to mention Transocean, the operators of the drilling rig, they only mention BP. The propaganda worked.

Johnny555 5y ago
You don't think that being responsible for the biggest oil spill ever is what leads to BP's name recognition? It took 87 days to shut down the well (and the cleanup continued for months afterwards), so it was in the news for a long time. (even though they were paying Transocean and Halliburton to run the rig, BP was found mostly responsible) Though I'm old enough that when I think of bad oil spills, the first thing that comes to mind is the Exxon Valdez spill.
- iamthemonster 5y ago
  True; I think in reality all the supermajors get some degree of negative coverage fairly equally, I was probably full of shit when I said Obama's finger-pointing had really worked. And yes, I'm of a similar age where "Exxon Valdez" is synonymous with large oil spills.
cuteboy19 5y ago
I think Exxon is mentioned even more than BP. This is a baseless conspiracy theory. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Exxon&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=British%20Petroleum&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- iamthemonster 5y ago
  Your search term was British Petroleum, which hasn't been the name of the company for 21 years, but when I searched for BP it actually supported your point more strongly. Thank you - I do believe that, on reflection, I was full of shit.

Johnny555 5y ago

You don't think that being responsible for the biggest oil spill ever is what leads to BP's name recognition? It took 87 days to shut down the well (and the cleanup continued for months afterwards), so it was in the news for a long time. (even though they were paying Transocean and Halliburton to run the rig, BP was found mostly responsible) Though I'm old enough that when I think of bad oil spills, the first thing that comes to mind is the Exxon Valdez spill.

iamthemonster 5y ago
True; I think in reality all the supermajors get some degree of negative coverage fairly equally, I was probably full of shit when I said Obama's finger-pointing had really worked. And yes, I'm of a similar age where "Exxon Valdez" is synonymous with large oil spills.

cuteboy19 5y ago

I think Exxon is mentioned even more than BP. This is a baseless conspiracy theory. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=Exxon&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=British%20Petroleum&sort=byPopularity https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

iamthemonster 5y ago
Your search term was British Petroleum, which hasn't been the name of the company for 21 years, but when I searched for BP it actually supported your point more strongly. Thank you - I do believe that, on reflection, I was full of shit.