BP Hopes Young Recruits Can Make It Cool

The oil behemoth’s senior executives are turning to twenty-something mentors in an effort to catch up with tech companies.

Bernard Looney, CEO of upstream at BP, left, and his mentor, Connor Tann, at the company's head offices in London

Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg
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Every few weeks, in a glass-walled office with a picture of an oil platform filling the east side, an unusual conversation takes place.

Bernard Looney, the 48-year-old who controls BP Plc’s massive oil and gas production, sits down with a 26-year-old petrophysicist, Connor Tann, to get answers to a few fundamental questions. Among the most important: How can the oil behemoth keep up with the times?