BP still under pressure 20 months after Deepwater Horizon

It’s 20 months since the Deepwater Horizon tragedy. Anthea Pitt and Kwok W Wan ask: has BP really turned the corner?

Spare a thought for Bob Dudley. In the aftermath of last year’s Macondo disaster, the BP chief executive’s every public appearance needs to be the ne plus ultra of public-relations master strokes. In his plenary address at December’s World Petroleum Congress (WPC) in Doha, Dudley – yet again – went to great lengths to reassure the industry that the firm had learned hard lessons from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Much of what Dudley had to say had been said before: the supermajor had changed for the better; it has restructured its operations to ensure best practice and improved oversight; it is committed to meeting the most stringent of safety standards; it will ensure a similar catastrophe