Bob Dudley to lead BP
27 Jul 2010
London – Bob Dudley is to take over as chief executive of BP on 1 Oct. He is currently a main board director of BP and runs its recently-established unit responsible for clean-up operations and compensation programmes in the Gulf of Mexico.
He joined BP from Amoco after the merger of the two companies in 1998, and was president and CEO of BP’s Russian JV, TNK-BP, until 2008. BP’s new boss will be based in London and will hand over his present duties in the US to Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America.
Dudley was appointed to the BP board of directors in April 2009 as an executive director and member of the senior management team. Prior to the Gulf of Mexico incident he oversaw the BP Group’s activities in Asia and the Americas.
Dudley stepped down in December 2008 from his role as president and CEO of TNK-BP in Moscow after more than five years. Prior to this role, he served as group VP for BP’s upstream businesses in Angola, Egypt, Russia, the Caspian Region and Algeria, and before that led BP’s renewables and alternative energy activities. His earlier work included roles for BP group strategy in London, following a similar role with Amoco Corp. in Chicago.
Before the merger with BP, Dudley was based in Moscow from 1994 through 1997 in a role of corporate development for Amoco’s upstream and downstream businesses in Russia. Prior to that he worked on the restructuring of oil and gas R&D activities in the US, and between 1987 and 1993, he worked on the negotiation and development projects in the South China Sea.
In the 1980s he served in a variety of commercial and operating roles in the USA and the UK sector of the North Sea working in Chicago, Aberdeen and Houston.
Dudley holds a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois, a masters in international management from Thunderbird School of Global Management, and an MBA from SMU.
