Change of name for Statoil

The company also adopted a new logo and visual identity at the same time.
“Crossing energy frontiers” was presented as the new vision by chief executive Helge Lund along with the changed visual identity in a global employee forum broadcast from London.

“StatoilHydro” had always been viewed as a temporary designation. The plan was that the company would eventually get a completely different name containing neither Statoil nor Hydro. But that was not to be.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy, representing the largest owner, wrote to the board that it would only vote for a name which gave the main emphasis to Statoil or for Statoil alone.

As a result, the board announced that it would propose Statoil ASA as the new name for the company to the annual general meeting on 19 May 2009.
The changeover was estimated to cost around NOK 200 million, compared with a NOK 50-60 million bill for the move from Statoil to StatoilHydro because the service stations were excluded.

It had been explicitly stated in the merger agreement that the latter were not necessarily embraced by the new group identity. Had they been included, the bill would have been much larger.

Sources:
Statoil website, 2 November 2009. “StatoilHydro becomes Statoil”,