Keeping these principles in mind, Browne took his mother’s death as an opportunity for rebirth. By 2003, he had begun to appear in public with a 23-year-old named Jeff Chevalier.

With dark hair, a widow’s peak, and brooding, ethereal features, Chevalier appeared to have come from another world, and in some ways he did: Chevalier, a Canadian, met Browne when the C.E.O. ordered him from a website called Suited and Booted. The relationship had all the pathos of most May-­December romances. Chevalier, who had not grown up wealthy, soon found himself drinking $6,000 bottles of claret with the prime minister and serving as a fourth at dinners with the out-of-the-closet European trade commissioner Peter Mandelson and Reinaldo Avila da Silva, whom the blushing press routinely referred to as Mandelson’s “Brazilian partner.” Chevalier flew on private jets and had the use of Browne’s Mercedes, driver, BP secretary, and private butler. Browne’s friends seemed to accept him with no questions asked. Once, Chevalier recounted to the Mail on Sunday, he was chatted up by Princess Michael of Kent. “You must be a brilliant pianist,” she gushed. When Chevalier explained that he wasn’t a pianist, she was unfazed. “Well, whatever you do, I am sure you are brilliant!”

Chevalier said Browne used his influence to extend Chevalier’s visa so that he wouldn’t have to leave England or return to Canada. He also alleges that once, when Chevalier was short of cash while on vacation, a BP employee met him at the airport with $5,000 so that he could fly back to London to meet Browne. Chevalier’s old life fell away, and he eased gradually into the semi-public role of Browne’s lover.

No one would dispute that Texas City, Texas, is a very long way from St. James’s Square. It is a rough-and-tumble blue-collar town on the Gulf Coast, where people know all too well that refinery work is often life threatening but just as often the only work available. On March 23, 2005, something went very wrong at BP’s Texas City refinery, the third largest in the U.S. An aging tank used to separate gas and fluid overflowed, filling the air with flammable vapor. A driver unwittingly left his truck running, igniting a fireball that by the end of the day had killed 15 people and injured more than 200. Not surprisingly, the blast led to the launch of hundreds of multimillion-dollar lawsuits and several investigations, including one by a commission that former secretary of state James Baker headed. A probe by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board specifically blamed BP’s closed culture for the explosion. In 2006, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $21.3 million, the largest penalty of its kind ever issued.

That wasn’t all that would befall BP. The next several months brought a cascade of problems, almost all blamed on lax oversight and poor management. In March, 200,000 gallons of crude leaked out of a BP pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, forcing the company to partially shut down a major field. The pipe, it turned out, hadn’t been cleaned in years. In April, the U.S. Department of Labor fined BP for unsafe operations in an Ohio refinery. Also during this time, the company was unable to capitalize on its Thunder Horse offshore oil platform—the world’s largest—which was damaged during Hurricane Dennis in 2005. And in June, the government charged some of BP’s traders in Houston with trying to manipulate the price of propane in the Midwest and Northeast.

All these incidents inevitably prompted this question: How could a company that was supposed to be a model of corporate citizenship have gone so wrong? The answer that emerged was simple, and the weakness of Browne’s highly praised policy of acquiring big companies and instituting massive cost cuts was suddenly, fatally exposed. Instead of putting excess cash into maintenance and safety, the executives in London had ordered the company to “bank the savings.” But as plaintiffs’ attorneys have alleged, a rubber band can be stretched only so far before it breaks. BP led the industry in refinery deaths from 1995 to 2005. For 10 years, there was a fire a week at the Texas City plant, and many were afraid to work there, fearing that disaster was imminent. As an employee explained in a survey, “No one here in management cares. . . . We have been very lucky so far with this.” At the same time, the arrogance of BP executives was easily recognizable. One memo, prepared for a meeting held before the Texas City explosion, insisted on cost cuts, a familiar refrain at the plant: “Which bit of 25 percent don’t you understand??? We are going to be wasting our time on Monday unless you come prepared to commit to a 25 percent cut.”

Even after the explosion, not much changed. An executive suggested that the refinery’s problems would soon be eclipsed in the press by the concurrent Terri Schiavo controversy, while ­another complained bitterly about having to visit the accident site during his vacation. “I arrived in Texas City at 3 a.m. with Lord Browne and we spent the day there—at the cost of a precious day of my leave,” read the email, which surfaced in a lawsuit filed after the ­explosion. Brent Coon, a Beaumont, Texas, attorney representing people ­injured in the explosion, says, “BP’s conduct questions whether it has a moral compass.” BP officials and Browne himself declined to comment on internal company matters.

The accidents didn’t help BP’s stock price, which stalled between $60 and $70 a share while Exxon Mobil’s soared. Worse, the Baker commission worked diligently throughout 2006 on its investigation, which would undoubtedly cause the company more grief. Browne, in a series of interviews and conference calls, slowly made the transition from denial to acceptance. Toward the end, he seemed rattled that the beloved image of himself and his company that he had so carefully constructed had been proved false. “He ­really viewed himself as a visionary on environmental safety,” one of the commission members says. “It really hit him where he felt the most secure.”

It didn’t help Browne that these events coincided with a steadily metastasizing internal debate at BP: the selection of his successor. Maybe it isn’t very surprising that the Sun King dragged his heels when it came to planning his departure: He had spent more than four decades at BP, and the company was in equal parts his business, his spouse, and his child. Browne was nearing the company’s mandatory retirement age of 60. (He turns 60 in February 2008.) BP’s chairman, a burly, no-nonsense Scot named Peter Sutherland, had made it plain that he was ready for Browne to go. The two had reportedly clashed over a proposed merger with Royal Dutch Shell. Sutherland opposed it, while Browne was a leading proponent of the deal.