The numbers are still huge. Compared with last year, BP’s profits may have crumpled, along with the oil price. But over the summer, the oil major still made almost $100,000 every three minutes – about how long it takes to fill a car at the petrol station. That, plus a pledge by chief executive Tony Hayward to cut out another $1bn of costs, saw BP’s share price jump 5 per cent on Tuesday morning. A company that was worth $172bn before breakfast was worth $9bn more moments after.

That reaction was partly thanks to Mr Hayward’s “Forward Agenda”, which seems to have embedded a spirit of restructuring in the company. Include Tuesday’s promise, and $4bn of costs will have been cut since he took the helm in 2007. Although some of those savings are because of factors out of BP’s control – such as broader cost deflation – Mr Hayward believes that perhaps two-thirds of them are sustainable, irrespective of the economic cycle.