BP’s scandal-ridden CEO Bernard Looney was targeted by a human rights group months before his sudden resignation Tuesday after it was revealed the oil chief failed to fully disclose details of his past personal relationships with colleagues.
Nonprofit organization Global Witness commandeered controversial OnlyFans billboards around London starring social media personality Eliza Rose Watson donning lingerie and replaced them with adverts for “OilyFans” to draw attention to the hoards of money oil execs like Looney earned from the energy crisis.
The photoshopped image showing a topless Looney with BP’s green-and-yellow starburst logo for pasties was plastered on the side of trucks and took over a larger-than-life billboard on Downing Street — home to the UK Prime Minister’s office — throughout July.
“Bernard’s package is bulging (and so is your gas bill),” the “OilyFans” ad said in a cheeky nod to the content found on subscription-based porn site OnlyFans.
“BP CEO Bernard Looney’s pay DOUBLED to £10 million ($12.5 million USD), whilst many of us couldn’t afford to heat our homes,” the billboard also said in response to BP’s annual investor meeting in April, where nearly one-fifth of BP’s shareholders voted against the UK’s Energy Bill Support Scheme, which sought to give every household a £400 discount on their energy bills for winter in 2022 and 2023.
Domestic energy prices skyrocketed more than 54% in 2022 in the UK — exacerbated by the region’s high proportion of poorly-insulated homes and rising oil costs inflicted by the Ukraine war — causing local officials to set price caps.
As of Oct. 1, the household energy price cap is over $2,400, a year — a stark rise from last winter’s max of $1,500, according to the UK’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, and severely unaffordable for many residents across the pond.
Thus, Global Witness used its Looney-starring “OilyFans” campaign to highlight how “BP is richer because you’re poorer,” the environmental rights group’s senior campaigner, Jonathan Noronha-Gant, said.
During the month-long effort — when a drive-by truck boasting the ad drove around major London landmarks, such as Big Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and The London Eye — Global Witness also shared the URL to an action site, encouraging onlookers to share tweets of the advert using #OilyFans.
The website, OilFans.co.uk, is no longer active, though Global Witness still owns the domain name, the company confirmed to The Post.
“Our billboards highlighted the gross inequalities at the heart of a system that has seen oil executives make millions from an energy crisis. Sadly, it doesn’t matter who the CEO of BP is, whether it’s Bernard Looney or his replacement, the company is wrecking the planet and enriching its shareholders,” a Global Witness spokesperson said.
Representatives for BP did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for comment.
BP’s Chief Financial Officer Murray Auchincloss is acting as the oil giant’s interim CEO after Looney’s personal relationships with company colleagues were brought to light, prompting the company to launch an investigation.
The allegations were similar to those already investigated by the board in May 2022. During that review, Looney disclosed “a small number of historical relationships with colleagues prior to becoming CEO.”
No breach of the company’s code of conduct was found at the time and the board was given assurances by Looney “regarding disclosure of past personal relationships, as well as his future behavior.”
The 53-year-old Ireland-born exec became BP’s CEO in February 2020 with a vow to reinvent the 114-year-old company, laying out ambitious plans for the British energy giant to achieve zero net emissions by 2050, and to invest billions in renewable and low-carbon power.
Looney informed BP’s board on Tuesday that he did not fully disclose details of all relationships, prompting his resignation after just three years at the company.
Shares of BP slipped less than 1% on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
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