Stakeholder Analysis

Abstract

During the summer of 1997, Greenpeace UK, part of the international environmental protest organisation, and British Petroleum were locked in conflict. There was British Petroleum, a giant multinational oil company, heavily engaged in pushing forward the frontiers of oil exploration in the rough and deep waters of the North Atlantic, 90 miles west of the Shetland Islands and aptly named by the company the Atlantic frontier’. Two oil fields were being developed — Foinaven, which was expected to yield around 200 million barrels of oil, and, further down the line, Schiehallion, which was estimated to yield a bumper 420 million barrels. Senior executives at BP were only too well aware that the Foinaven field was already a year behind schedule, owing to the replacement of faulty well heads and that the pre-production phase of the project had cost £670m against a budgeted expenditure of £550m. In this context, further delays to the project were a serious concern.