BP has appointed its fourth CEO in 6 years – but will she be radically different?

BP is changing its CEO again, but not its direction.

The appointment of Woodside Energy boss Meg O’Neill as its fourth new leader in six years suggests continuity, not course correction, after Murray Auchincloss’s tenure of less than two years.

I would suggest that Auchincloss didn’t necessarily do anything particularly that Meg O’Neill won’t be doing as well.

When I first met him in 2011, Auchincloss was chief of staff to Bob Dudley, BP’s immensely successful CEO who joined in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Dudley was replaced in early 2020 by Bernard Looney, who sought to transform the company into a green energy giant. Then, the company came under pressure from investors amid share price underperformance.

Looney left his role in 2023 following the revelation of undisclosed relationships with colleagues. Some people saw other contenders internally, because BP has always picked key people internally, up until this moment.

Other names were floated as contenders to lead the energy giant. Auchincloss was CFO when he stepped up to be CEO in January 2024. He was instrumental in reversing Looney’s strategy and focusing on the company’s core gas and oil units, and trying to get down some of the company’s enormous debt.

Carol Howle, BP’s executive vice president for supply, trading, and shipping, is to be interim CEO until O’Neill takes over on April 1. Auchincloss is set to remain until the end of 2026 in an advisory capacity. Many would suggest that a lot of the reasons why he’s stepping down are not necessarily his fault.

He was basically trying to redress a policy direction that shareholders ultimately decided was not the right way to go. This is about retrenchment. This is about Albert Manifold, the chair, saying, “right, we need someone to take us forward in the United States more aggressively, to get the debt down more aggressively, and to keep activist investors Elliott Management on board as well.”

Meg O’Neill is a US citizen. Is that going to help with exposure to the United States? At Woodside, she’s been very active in trying to increase their LNG assets and strategic purchases.

This appointment is about the speed of direction and perhaps the aggressiveness. It’s the public perception from some shareholders about Auchincloss as well.

I’ll be interested to see how Elliot moves forward. My understanding is that they’re actually very happy about the appointment. It’s fascinating to look at the share price performance over the last couple of years. It’s up 56% in five years — not bad, considering that during that period, we’ve seen low oil prices with the Brent price currently trading just around $60 a barrel.