BP has removed its chairman, Albert Manifold, after the oil major’s board was alerted to “serious concerns” related to governance standards, oversight and conduct.
The London-based company said Tuesday that its board had unanimously decided that Mr Manifold should no longer serve as chair, and that he would depart immediately.
“The board has been surprised and disappointed to learn of governance oversight and conduct issues it deems unacceptable and has taken decisive action,” said Amanda Blanc, the company’s senior independent director.
BP didn’t elaborate on the reasons for Mr Manifold’s departure, and the executive didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Shares in the company dropped 4 per cent in London on Tuesday.
Mr Manifold’s abrupt departure is a blow for BP, a storeyed yet often troubled energy producer that is aiming to reinvigorate its fossil-fuel business after an ill-timed turn toward renewable energy.
BP named Mr Manifold as its chairman last July, tapping an energy-industry outsider to oversee the company’s new strategy. The Irish executive was previously chief executive of Irish building-materials supplier CRH, where he led an overhaul of its portfolio.
Mr Manifold’s appointment had been intended to give BP a clean break from its past leadership, which embarked on a now-abandoned pivot toward green energy. A number of executives and board members left in the months following his arrival.
On arrival, Mr Manifold said the company needed to act with urgency to simplify what he described as an overly complex business, signalling a desire to sell off some assets.
BP under Mr Manifold also appointed a new chief executive, Meg O’Neill, who took the helm in April.
In Ms O’Neill, BP chose a veteran oil and gas executive with decades of experience at Exxon Mobil and more recently at the head of Australian energy producer Woodside Energy. The new leadership team signalled it would continue BP’s return to its fossil-fuel roots, away from clean-energy investments that couldn’t match the returns of oil and gas.
Before Tuesday’s disclosure, BP’s shares were riding the wave of higher energy prices sparked by the Iran war.
The company is ideally positioned to benefit, thanks to its trading operations and relatively few physical assets around the Persian Gulf compared to rivals like Shell and Exxon. The company recently reported a doubling in first-quarter profit, while its shares are up about 20 per cent this year.
Now, the company is thrust back into a fresh period of upheaval.
“Here we go again,” analysts at Barclays wrote in a note about Mr Manifold’s departure. “We think serious questions do need to be asked about the wider board’s decision-making process,” they said, adding that the situation “appears to be another misstep in terms of appointments.”
Mr Manifold’s ouster is the latest abrupt management change at BP. Former CEO Bernard Looney, resigned in September 2023 over past relationships with colleagues. The company said at the time that Looney hadn’t been “fully transparent” about the relationships.
The job of overseeing BP’s board now falls to Ian Tyler, an existing director who will take over from Mr Manifold as chairman on an interim basis.
BP has often encountered troubles since its 1998 merger with Amoco, with management in London sometimes criticised for weak oversight of the company’s sprawling global operations.
Aside from turmoil in the executive ranks, there have been operational issues. In 2005, a Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 people in one of the worst industrial accidents in US history. Five years later, an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to the largest offshore oil spill in US history.
Extracted in full from: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/bp-removes-chairman-over-governance-issues/news-story/e1ecf0626b81317ade82885a3f3158ba
