British Gas tackles social media deluge on BG takeover talks

Big six utility British Gas battled a deluge of concerned customer queries via social media on Wednesday following news that Royal Dutch Shell plans to take over BG Group, almost 18 years after the demerger which split the corporate group.

The supplier’s twitter accounts dealt with almost 40 tweets from confused and concerned members of the public who wrongfully believed that the utility would be in some way affected by the planned £47 billion takeover.

The upstream oil and gas explorer BG Group has been separate from the Centrica-owned British Gas since its demerger in 1997. At the time, British Gas plc spun off its customer business Centrica -which owns supplier British Gas – and two years later the remaining infrastructure-focused British Gas plc renamed itself BG Group, in December 1999.

One year later the Lattice company demerged from BG before a “merger of equals” took place between Lattice and National Grid to form National Grid Transco, which was then renamed National Grid in July 2005.

Due to the similar names used by different fragments of the original British Gas company following 1997, British Gas was forced to explain the demerger almost 40 times through its two Twitter accounts, with further tweets posted as part of its conversation with customers.

“It’s certainly filling up our Twitter feed and making our morning fairly hectic!” said one British Gas tweet in reference to the BG Group news.

At the same time British Gas continued to engage with customers’ supply and billing queries, as well as defending the company’s profits and tax contributions.

The £47 billion takeover of BG Group by Royal Dutch Shell is not expected to have a significant impact on the UK utilities market.