What looks wrong
A sunflower logo and a slogan that sounded like an exit from fossil fuels.
What’s actually going on
BP launched the 'Beyond Petroleum' identity in 2000, a public-facing rebrand that implied a company leaving oil behind. It remained one of the world's major oil producers. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster the tagline became a punchline, and BP later dropped that line. The hypocrisy is the slogan versus the business mix — a public campaign, not a private person.
In 2000, BP Amoco rolled out a new mark: a green-yellow helios, and a spoken name, Beyond Petroleum. The campaign was not subtle. It invited the public to hear BP as a company on the way to something else.
The something else never replaced the core. BP stayed a major explorer and producer of oil and gas. The Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 — a well BP operated — killed 11 workers and spilled millions of barrels. Federal pages still treat it as a defining enforcement matter. The sunflower and the spill sat in the same decade.
We are not inventing a secret. The slogan was a billboard. The production numbers were in the annual reports. After the disaster, 'Beyond Petroleum' was widely retired as a consumer line. A company can invest in alternatives and still be, mainly, an oil company. The vote is whether the name was a direction or a costume.
Source: U.S. Coast Guard / EPA Deepwater Horizon response archive (federal public record of the 2010 spill BP operated). We quote the public record. A settlement is not always an admission.