In 2007, Obama’s Secretary of Energy, had a bold pronouncement: British Petroleum was going to help save the world.

The former Stanford Professor and 1997 Nobel Laureate Stephen Chu made the comment in an interview now available on YouTube.

At the time the video was filmed, BP had just given $500 million to establish a bio-science research lab in coordination with the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory.

ADVERTISEMENT

“This is a great opportunity,” Chu remarked. “There’s been a lot of excitement that’s been growing over the last several years. Now, we’ve partnered with BP — we’ll have the resources we need to carry out some of the things we want to do in order to help save the world.”

“Well, we’re going to save the world in part by doing something about the energy problem,” Chu continued, after a question about how BP would help save the world.

“This impacts national security, this impacts economic prosperity, and most important for me this impacts stewardship of the environment,” he added.