When "BP" Stands For "Big Problems"

From: Neil Chapman
Office: BP Press office, Houston

To: All BP Employees

Colleagues. As you may have heard by now, BP has had a slight incident in the Gulf of Mexico with one of our wells. The American media has attempted to paint this miscue with such terms as 'disaster', 'crisis', 'catastrophe', or 'OIL-MAGEDDON 2010!'. We think these terms a a tad harsh and unfair.

Admittedly, we didn't have a plan when it started, but the unsung heroes in our marketing department have worked tireless to come up with cool sounding buzz words like "top hat" & "top kill". Unfortunately, our engineers have not been as successful in employing these methods to actually shut off the undersea oil trickle.

So far, despite the EPIC FAIL of our engineers, and the endless waiting for the Obama administration to get off the side lines bail us out, our governing body has decided to finally take swift and decisive action.

We are reorganizing and renaming the company.

"BP" will remain with only the assets of the Deepwater Horizon well, and all the associated liability and bad PR. Everything else will be folded into a new, better company. Taking a queue from "ValueJet", who changed their name to "AirTran Airways" after they had a little bad press, we have come up with a new name:

American Energy Company – AMECO

Gone are any references to 'British' or 'Petroleum'. It also taps into the goodwill and name recognition of 'AMOCO', but changing the middle 'O' to an 'e' signifies our shift from being an 'oil company' to being an 'energy company'. Also, the use of lower case will make us appear hip and modern. Finally, the green flame is symbolizes our environmental steward ship. (Don't think too hard about that bit, and if anybody asks, make a "lighting farts" joke, and run.)

So, in summary:

• Go marketing!
• Our engineers suck!

Sincerely,

Neil Chapman

PS – Since Edmonton finish with the fewest points in the NHL:
GO BLACKHAWKS!