Who Founded BP?

Carol Howle, BP's executive vice president for supply, trading and shipping, served as interim CEO from December 2025, when Murray Auchincloss stepped down, until Meg O'Neill joined on April 1, 2026. She presented BP's full-year 2025 results in February 2026, when the board suspended share buybacks to direct surplus cash to debt reduction.

Murray Auchincloss, a Canadian who joined Amoco in 1992 and became BP's CFO in 2020, was interim CEO after Bernard Looney's September 2023 exit and permanent CEO from January 2024. He led the February 2025 reset that cut transition spending, raised upstream investment to about $10 billion a year and launched a $20 billion divestment programme, and he agreed the JERA Nex bp offshore wind joint venture. With the shares still weak and activist Elliott Management pressing for faster change, BP announced on December 17, 2025 that he would step down; he agreed to stay on in an advisory role until December 2026.

Bernard Looney's three-and-a-half-year tenure as CEO was defined by the most ambitious energy transition strategy ever articulated by a major oil company and ended in its most dramatic leadership dismissal. As CEO, Looney announced BP's 2020 net-zero strategy including commitments to cut oil and gas production by 40% by 2030 and invest up to $5 billion per year in clean energy that repositioned BP as the most progressive of the oil majors on climate. He also managed BP through the COVID-19 demand collapse, including the 2020 dividend cut and associated $17 billion asset write-downs. His dismissal in September 2023 for being 'seriously misleading' to the board about personal relationships with colleagues forfeited his severance and unveiled a governance failure that overshadowed his strategic legacy.

Bob Dudley, an American who began his career at Amoco and previously ran the TNK-BP joint venture in Russia, was BP's first American CEO, serving from October 2010 to February 2020. He steered BP through the Deepwater Horizon settlements, including the $18.7 billion federal and state agreement announced in 2015, sold large parts of the portfolio to pay claims, and in 2013 exchanged BP's TNK-BP stake for cash and 19.75% of Rosneft. He handed over to Bernard Looney in February 2020.

Tony Hayward, a geologist who joined BP in 1982 and ran its exploration and production business, succeeded John Browne in May 2007 and promised to fix BP's safety culture after Texas City. His tenure was defined by the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout; his remark "I'd like my life back" became a symbol of BP's poorly judged crisis response. In July 2010 BP announced that he would hand over to Bob Dudley on October 1, 2010.

John Browne (later Lord Browne of Madingley) turned BP into a global supermajor through the acquisitions of Amoco (1998), ARCO (2000) and Burmah Castrol (2000). In a 1997 speech at Stanford University he became the first head of a major oil company to accept the case for action on climate change, and he launched the "Beyond Petroleum" rebrand and Helios logo in 2000. His tenure also included the 2005 Texas City refinery explosion, which killed 15 workers, and the 2006 Prudhoe Bay pipeline leak. He resigned in May 2007 after a court case about his private life.