The man who could sell the British public on fracking

Iain Conn, who will succeed Sam Laidlaw as chief executive of Centrica, would have been a dead cert for the top job at his current employer, BP, were it not for the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. The subsequent PR fiasco terminated the BP career of the then chief executive Tony Hayward — who seemed crushed by the episode, but recovered to make a double fortune at Genel Energy and Glencore. Had Hayward served a full term, Conn (BP’s head of refining and marketing) would almost certainly have followed him. As it was, BP found it more politic to appoint an American, Bob Dudley, to repair relations in Washington while simultaneously arm-wrestling with the Kremlin-connected oligarchs who were BP’s co-investors in Russia. If that would have been a tough assignment, the one Conn will take on at Centrica is just as challenging: seeking to justify domestic energy price rises, and his own £3.7 million pay package, to grandstanding politicians and angry consumers. The Old Etonian Laidlaw was uneasy in the spotlight, particularly when tabloids dubbed him ‘Sammy Two Pools’ over (apparently incorrect) reports of plans for a second swimming pool on his ‘sprawling Costwold estate’. The final straw may have been another nickname, ‘the Blackout Blackmailer’, after Laidlaw responded to Ofgem’s latest investigation into the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers with a warning that pricing uncertainty would bring a halt to capital investment — and power cuts ahead.

Is Conn better equipped for the Today programme and select committee grillings? He’s affable and articulate and I suspect he’s pretty thick-skinned; he has the advantage of an Edinburgh accent, being a product (like Alistair Darling and Andrew Marr) of Loretto school.