The latest research snapshot from Globescan suggests that BP is on the road back from the reputational brink

When BP posted a $1.4bn loss recently (once oil price fluctuations are taken into account), many analysts pointed to the role played by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The company has also announced that a further $847m has been set aside to pay the costs incurred by that disaster.

BP emerges at or near the top of the list of firms considered to be environmentally responsible. Globally, BP is one of the top 20 most-mentioned corporations when people are asked to name a large company that is a leader in environmental issues.

Frequent citations

In the UK, moreover, BP is the company most frequently mentioned as being environmentally responsible (6%), and in the US it is the second most frequently mentioned (5%), behind only General Electric.

Note that no company is cited by more than 4% of global respondents (due to the wide diversity of national firms mentioned) and 44% of people globally, and higher proportions still in the UK and US, could not name, or chose not to name, an environmentally responsible company.

This uptick in public perception is welcome news for the embattled company, trading as it does in a market driven by more than tangible assets. The reasons given by respondents for naming BP as a responsible company indicate that it has benefitted from low expectations for corporate responsibility in general, and oil company behaviour in particular.

Poor industry reputation

The unstated assumption is that companies will not clean up their mess, but will “cut and run” once profits are threatened.

While many undoubtedly still see the company as an environmental villain, these figures suggest that paying substantial compensation to those affected by the spill, and pouring resources into the clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico – and being seen to do these things – has enabled BP to cut through public cynicism and start to rebuild its reputation.

Sam Mountford isdirector, global insights, at Globescan www.globescan.com.