BP PLC

1909 to 1954

In May 1908, a group of British geologists discovered a large amount of oil at Masjed Soleyman located in the Khuzestan Province in the southwest of Persia ( Iran ). It was the first commercially significant find of oil in the Middle East. William Knox D'Arcy, by contract with Ali-Qoli Khan Bakhtiari, obtained permission to explore for oil for the first time in the Middle East, an event which changed the history of the entire region. The oil discovery led to petrochemical industry development and also the establishment of industries that strongly depended on oil. On 14 April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was incorporated as a subsidiary of Burmah Oil Company. Some of the shares were sold to the public. The first chairman and minority shareholder of the company became Lord Strathcona.

Immediately after establishing the company, the British government asked Percy Cox, British resident to Bushehr, to negotiate an agreement with Sheikh Khaz'al Ibn Jabir of Arabistan for APOC to obtain a site on Abadan Island for a refinery, depot, storage tanks, and other operations. The refinery was built and began operating in 1912. In 1914, the British government acquired a controlling interest (50.0025%) in the company, at the urging of Winston Churchill, the then First Lord of the Admiralty, and the British navy quickly switched from coal to oil for the majority of their war ships. APOC also signed a 30-year contract with the British Admiralty for supplying oil for the Royal Navy at the fixed price. In 1915, APOC established its shipping subsidiary the British Tanker Company and in 1916, it acquired the British Petroleum Company which was a marketing arm of the German Europäische Petroleum Union in Britain. In 1919, the company became a shale-oil producer by establishing a subsidiary named Scottish Oils which merged remaining Scottish oil-shale industries.

After World War I, APOC started marketing its products in Continental Europe and acquired stakes in the local marketing companies in several European countries. Refineries were built in Llandarcy in Wales (the first refinery in the United Kingdom) and Grangemouth in Scotland. It also acquired the controlling stake in the Courchelettes refinery in France and formed, in conjunction with the Government of Australia, a partnership named Commonwealth Oil Refineries, which built the Australian's first refinery in Laverton, Victoria. In 1923, Burmah employed Winston Churchill as a paid consultant to lobby the British government to allow APOC have exclusive rights to Persian oil resources, which were subsequently granted by the Iranian monarchy.

APOC and the Armenian businessman Calouste Gulbenkian were the driving forces behind the creation of Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) in 1912, to explore oil in Mesopotamia (now Iraq); and by 1914, APOC held 50% of TPC shares. In 1925, TPC received concession in the Mesopotamian oil resources from the Iraqi government under British mandate. TPC finally struck oil in Iraq on 14 October 1927. By 1928, the APOC's shareholding in TPC, which by now was named Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was reduced to 23.75%; as the result of the changing geopolitics post Ottoman Empire break-up, and the Red Line Agreement. Relations were generally cordial between the pro-west Hashemite Monarchy (1932–58) in Iraq and IPC, in spite of disputes centred on Iraq's wish for greater involvement and more royalties. During the 1928–68 time period, IPC monopolised oil exploration inside the Red Line; excluding Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

In 1927, Burmah Oil and Royal Dutch Shell formed Burmah-Shell, a joint marketing company. In 1928, APOC and Shell formed the Consolidated Petroleum Company for sale and marketing in Cyprus, South Africa and Ceylon, which in 1932 followed by a joint marketing company Shell-Mex and BP in the United Kingdom. In 1937, AIOC and Shell formed the Shell/D'Arcy Exploration Partners partnership to explore for oil in Nigeria. The partnership was equally owned but operated by Shell. It was later replaced by Shell-D'Arcy Petroleum Development Company and Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company (now Shell Petroleum Development Company ).

In 1934, APOC and Gulf Oil founded the Kuwait Oil Company as an equally owned partnership. The oil concession rights were awarded to the company on 23 December 1934 and the company started drilling operations in 1936. In 1935, Reza Shah requested the international community to refer to Persia as ' Iran ', which was reflected in the name change of APOC to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC).

In 1937, Iraq Petroleum Company, 23.75% owned by BP, signed an oil concession agreement with the Sultan of Muscat that covers the entire region of the Sultanate, which was in fact limited to the coastal area of present-day Oman. After several years of failure to discover oil in the Sultanate's region, IPC presumed that oil was more likely to be found in the interior region of Oman, which was part of the Imamate of Oman. IPC offered financial support to raise an armed force that would assist the Sultanate in occupying the interior region of Oman. Later, in 1954, the Sultan of Muscat, backed by the British government and the financial aid he received from IPC, started occupying regions within the interior of Oman, which led to the outbreak of Jebel Akhdar War that lasted for more than 5 years.

In 1947, British Petroleum Chemicals was incorporated as a joint venture of AIOC and The Distillers Company. In 1956, the company was renamed British Hydrocarbon Chemicals.

Following World War II, nationalistic sentiments were on the rise in the Middle East; most notable being Iranian nationalism, and Arab Nationalism. In Iran, the AIOC and the pro-western Iranian government led by Prime Minister Ali Razmara resisted nationalist calls to revise AIOC's concession terms in Iran's favour. In March 1951, Razmara was assassinated and Mohammed Mossadeq, a nationalist, was elected as the new prime minister by the Majlis of Iran (parliament). In April 1951, the Iranian government nationalised the Iranian oil industry by unanimous vote, and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was formed, displacing the AIOC. The AIOC withdrew its management from Iran, and Britain organised an effective worldwide embargo of Iranian oil. The British government, which owned the AIOC, contested the nationalisation at the International Court of Justice at The Hague, but its complaint was dismissed.

Prime Minister Churchill asked President Eisenhower for help in overthrowing Mossadeq. The anti-Mossadeq plan was orchestrated under the code-name ' Operation Ajax ' by CIA, and 'Operation Boot' by SIS (MI6). The CIA and the British helped stage a coup in August 1953, the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, which established pro-Western general Fazlollah Zahedi as the new PM, and greatly strengthened the political power of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The AIOC was able to return to Iran.

1954 to 1979

In 1954, the AIOC became the British Petroleum Company. After the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Iranian Oil Participants Ltd (IOP), a holding company, was founded in October 1954, in London to bring Iranian oil back to the international market. British Petroleum was a founding member of this company with 40% stake. IOP operated and managed oil facilities in Iran on behalf of NIOC. Similar to the Saudi-Aramco "50/50" agreement of 1950, the consortium agreed to share profits on a 50–50 basis with Iran, "but not to open its books to Iranian auditors or to allow Iranians onto its board of directors."

In 1953, British Petroleum entered the Canadian market through the purchase of a minority stake in Calgary-based Triad Oil Company, and expanded further to Alaska in 1959, resulting discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1969. In 1956, its subsidiary D'Arcy Exploration Co. (Africa) Ltd. was granted four oil concessions in Libya. In 1962, Scottish Oils ceased oil-shale operations. In 1965, it was the first company to strike oil in the North Sea. In 1969, BP entered the United States by acquiring the East Coast refining and marketing assets of Sinclair Oil Corporation. The Canadian holding company of British Petroleum was renamed BP Canada in 1969; and in 1971, it acquired 97.8% stake of Supertest Petroleum.

By the 1960s, British Petroleum had developed a reputation for taking on the riskiest ventures. It earned the company massive profits; it also earned them the worst safety record in the industry. In 1967, the giant oil tanker Torrey Canyon foundered off the English coast. Over 32 million US gallons (760,000 bbl; 120,000 m 3 ) of crude oil was spilled into the Atlantic and onto the beaches of Cornwall and Brittany, causing Britain's worst-ever oil spill. The ship was owned by the Bahamas -based Barracuda Tanker Corporation and was flying the flag of Liberia, a well-known flag of convenience, but was being chartered by British Petroleum. The ship was bombed by RAF jet bombers in an effort to break up the ship and burn off the leaking oil, but this failed to destroy the oil slick.

In 1967, BP acquired chemical and plastics assets of The Distillers Company which were merged with British Hydrocarbon Chemicals to form BP Chemicals.

The company's oil assets were nationalised in Libya in 1971, in Kuwait in 1975, and in Nigeria in 1979. In Iraq, IPC ceased its operations after it was nationalised by the Ba'athist Iraqi government in June 1972, although legally Iraq Petroleum Company still remains in existence but as a dormant company, and one of its associated companies — Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC), formerly Petroleum Development (Trucial Coast) Ltd – also continues with the original shareholding intact.

The intensified power struggle between oil companies and host governments in Middle East, along with the oil price shocks that followed the 1973 oil crisis meant British Petroleum lost most of its direct access to crude oil supplies produced in countries that belonged to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries ( OPEC ), and prompted it to diversify its operations beyond the heavily Middle East dependent oil production. In 1976, BP and Shell de-merged their marketing operations in the United Kingdom by dividing Shell-Mex and BP. In 1978, the company acquired a controlling interest in Standard Oil of Ohio (Sohio).

In Iran, British Petroleum continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The new regime of Ayatollah Khomeini nationalised all of the company's assets in Iran without compensation: as a result, BP lost 40% of its global crude oil supplies.

In 1970–1980s, BP diversified into coal, minerals and nutrition businesses which all were divested later.

1979 to 1997

The British government sold 80 million shares of BP at $7.58 in 1979, as part of Thatcher-era privatisation. This sale represented slightly more than 5% of BP's total shares and reduced the government's ownership of the company to 46%. On 19 October 1987, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher authorised the sale of an additional GBP7.5 billion ($12.2 billion) of BP shares at 333 pence, representing the government's remaining 31% stake in the company.

In November 1987, the Kuwait Investment Office purchased a 10.06% interest in BP, becoming the largest institutional shareholder. The following May, the KIO purchased additional shares, bringing their ownership to 21.6%. This raised concerns within BP that operations in the United States, BP's primary country of operations, would suffer. In October 1988, the British Department of Trade and Industry required the KIO to reduce its shares to 9.6% within 12 months.

Peter Walters was the company chairman from 1981 to 1990. During his period as chairman he reduced the company's refining capacity in Europe. In 1982, the downstream assets of BP Canada were sold to Petro Canada. In 1984, Standard Oil of California was renamed the Chevron Corporation; it bought Gulf Oil—the largest merger in history at that time. To meet anti-trust regulations, Chevron divested many of Gulf's operating subsidiaries, and sold some Gulf stations and a refinery in the eastern United States to British Petroleum and Cumberland Farms in 1985. In 1987, British Petroleum negotiated the acquisition of Britoil and the remaining publicly traded shares of Standard Oil of Ohio. At the same year it was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange where its share were traded until delisting in 2008.

Walters was replaced as chair by Robert Horton in 1990. Horton wrote on his appointment that he and his senior colleagues would adopt values representing the interests of "all stakeholders ", including the company's employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers and the community". Horton carried out a major corporate downsizing exercise, removing various tiers of management at the head office. In 1992, British Petroleum sold off its 57% stake in BP Canada ( upstream operations), which was renamed as Talisman Energy. John Browne, who had joined BP in 1966 and rose through the ranks to join the board as managing director in 1991, was appointed group chief executive in 1995.

In 1981, British Petroleum entered into the solar technology sector by acquiring 50% of Lucas Energy Systems, a company which became Lucas BP Solar Systems, and later BP Solar. The company was a manufacturer and installer of photovoltaic solar cells. It became wholly owned by British Petroleum in the mid-1980s.

British Petroleum entered the Russian market in 1990 and opened its first service station in Moscow in 1996. In 1997, it acquired a 10% stake for $571 million in the Russian oil company Sidanco, which later became a part of TNK-BP. Sidanco was run by Russian oligarch Vladimir Potanin who obtained Sidanco through the controversial loans-for-shares privatization scheme. In 2003, BP invested $8 billion into a joint venture with Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman 's TNK.

In 1992, the company entered the Azerbaijani market. In 1994, it signed the production sharing agreement for the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli oil project and in 1995 for the Shah Deniz gas field development.

1998 to 2009

Under John Browne, British Petroleum acquired other oil companies, transforming BP into the third largest oil company in the world. British Petroleum merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana) in December 1998, becoming BP Amoco plc. Most Amoco stations in the United States were converted to BP's brand and corporate identity. In 2000, BP Amoco acquired Atlantic Richfield Co. (ARCO) and Burmah Castrol. Together with the acquisition of ARCO in 2000, BP became owner of a 33.5% stake in the Olympic Pipeline. Later that year, BP became an operator of the pipeline and increased its stake up to 62.5%.

As part of the merger's brand awareness, the company helped the Tate Modern gallery of British Art launch RePresenting Britain 1500–2000. In 2001, in response to negative press on British Petroleum's poor safety standards, the company adopted a green sunburst logo and rebranded itself as BP ("Beyond Petroleum") plc. This coincided with Buccaroonies implementing the Wild Bean Cafe stores into BP Connect stations.

In the beginning of the 2000s, BP became the leading partner (and later operator) of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline project which opened a new oil transportation route from the Caspian region. In 2002, BP acquired the majority of Veba Öl AG, a subsidiary of VEBA AG, and subsequently rebranded its existing stations in Germany to the Aral name. As part of the deal, BP acquired also the Veba Öl's stake in Ruhr Öl joint venture. Ruhr Öl was dissolved in 2016.

On 1 September 2003, BP and a group of Russian businesses, known as AAR ( Alfa – Access – Renova ), announced the creation of a strategic partnership to jointly hold their oil assets in Russia and Ukraine. As a result, TNK-ВР was created.

In 2004, BP's olefins and derivatives business was moved into a separate entity which was sold to Ineos in 2005. In 2007, BP sold its corporate-owned convenience stores, typically known as " BP Connect ", to local franchisees and jobbers.

On 23 March 2005, 15 workers were killed and more than 170 injured in the Texas City refinery explosion. To save money, major upgrades to the 1934 refinery had been postponed. Browne pledged to prevent another catastrophe. Three months later, ' Thunder Horse PDQ ', BP's giant new production platform in the Gulf of Mexico, nearly sank during a hurricane. In their rush to finish the $1 billion platform, workers had installed a valve backwards, allowing the ballast tanks to flood. Inspections revealed other shoddy work. Repairs costing hundreds of millions kept Thunder Horse out of commission for three years.

Lord Browne resigned from BP on 1 May 2007. The head of exploration and production Tony Hayward became the new chief executive. In 2009, Hayward shifted emphasis from Lord Browne's focus on alternative energy, announcing that safety would henceforth be the company's "number one priority".

In 2007, BP formed with AB Sugar and DuPont a joint venture Vivergo Fuels which opened a bioethanol plant in Saltend near Hull, United Kingdom in December 2012. Together with DuPont, BP formed a biobutanol joint venture Butamax by acquiring biobutan technology company Biobutanol LLC in 2009.

In 2009, BP obtained a production contract to develop the supergiant Rumaila field with joint venture partner CNPC.

2010 to 2020

In January 2010, Carl-Henric Svanberg became chairman of BP board of directors.

On 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a major industrial accident, happened. Consequently, Bob Dudley replaced Tony Hayward as the company's CEO, serving from October 2010 to February 2020. BP announced a divestment program to sell about $38 billion worth of non-core assets to compensate its liabilities related to the accident. In July 2010, BP sold its natural gas activities in Alberta and British Columbia, Canada, to Apache Corporation. It sold its stake in the Petroperijá and Boquerón fields in Venezuela and in the Lan Tay and Lan Do fields, the Nam Con Son pipeline and terminal, and the Phu My 3 power plant in Vietnam to TNK-BP, forecourts and supply businesses in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi to Puma Energy, the Wytch Farm onshore oilfield in Dorset and a package of North Sea gas assets to Perenco, natural-gas liquids business in Canada to Plains All American Pipeline LP, natural gas assets in Kansas to Linn Energy, Carson Refinery in Southern California and its ARCO retail network to Tesoro, Sunray and Hemphill gas processing plants in Texas, together with their associated gas gathering system, to Eagle Rock Energy Partners, the Texas City Refinery and associated assets to Marathon Petroleum, the Gulf of Mexico located Marlin, Dorado, King, Horn Mountain, and Holstein fields as also its stake in non-operated Diana Hoover and Ram Powell fields to Plains Exploration & Production, non-operating stake in the Draugen oil field to Norske Shell, and the UK's liquefied petroleum gas distribution business to DCC. In November 2012, the U.S. Government temporarily banned BP from bidding any new federal contracts. The ban was conditionally lifted in March 2014.

In February 2011, BP formed a partnership with Reliance Industries, taking a 30% stake in a new Indian joint-venture for an initial payment of $7.2 billion. In September 2012, BP sold its subsidiary BP Chemicals (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., an operator of the Kuantan purified terephthalic acid (PTA) plant in Malaysia, to Reliance Industries for $230 million. In October 2012, BP sold its stake in TNK-BP to Rosneft for $12.3 billion in cash and 18.5% of Rosneft's stock. The deal was completed on 21 March 2013. In 2012, BP acquired an acreage in the Utica Shale but these developments plans were cancelled in 2014.

In 2011–2015, BP cut down its alternative energy business. The company announced its departure from the solar energy market in December 2011 by closing its solar power business, BP Solar. In 2012, BP shut down the BP Biofuels Highlands project which was developed since 2008 to make cellulosic ethanol from emerging energy crops like switchgrass and from biomass. In 2015, BP decided to exit from other lignocellulosic ethanol businesses. It sold its stake in Vivergo to Associated British Foods. BP and DuPont also mothballed their joint biobutanol pilot plant in Saltend.

In June 2014, BP agreed to a deal worth around $20 billion to supply CNOOC with liquefied natural gas. In 2014, Statoil Fuel & Retail sold its aviation fuel business to BP. To ensure the approval of competition authorities, BP agreed to sell the former Statoil aviation fuel businesses in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö airports to World Fuel Services in 2015.

In 2016, BP sold its Decatur, Alabama, plant to Indorama Ventures, of Thailand. At the same year, its Norwegian daughter company BP Norge merged with Det Norske Oljeselskap to form Aker BP.

In April 2017, the company reached an agreement to sell its Forties pipeline system in the North Sea to Ineos for $250 million. The sale included terminals at Dalmeny and Kinneil, a site in Aberdeen, and the Forties Unity Platform. In 2017, the company floated its subsidiary BP Midstream Partners LP, a pipeline operator in the United States, at the New York Stock Exchange. In Argentina, BP and Bridas Corporation agreed to merge their interests in Pan American Energy and Axion Energy to form a jointly owned Pan American Energy Group.

In 2017, BP invested $200 million to acquire a 43% stake in the solar energy developer Lightsource Renewable Energy, a company which was renamed Lightsource BP. In March 2017, the company acquired Clean Energy's biomethane business and assets, including its production sites and existing supply contracts. In April 2017, its subsidiary Butamax bought an isobutanol production company Nesika Energy.

In 2018, the company purchased BHP 's shale assets in Texas and Louisiana, including Petrohawk Energy, for $10.5 billion, which were integrated with its subsidiary BPX Energy. Also in 2018, BP bought a 16.5% interest in the Clair field in the UK from ConocoPhillips, increasing its share to 45.1%. BP paid £1.3 billion and gave to ConocoPhillips its 39.2% non-operated stake in the Kuparuk River Oil Field and satellite oil fields in Alaska. In December 2018, BP sold its wind assets in Texas.

In 2018, BP acquired Chargemaster, which operated the UK's largest electric vehicle charging network. In 2019, BP and Didi Chuxing formed a joint venture to build out electric vehicle charging infrastructure in China. In September 2020, BP announced it will build out a rapid charging network in London for Uber.

In January 2019, BP discovered 1 billion barrels (160 × 10 ^ 6 m 3 ) oil at its Thunder Horse location in the Gulf of Mexico. The company also announced plans to spend $1.3 billion on a third phase of its Atlantis field near New Orleans.

2021 to present

Helge Lund succeeded Carl-Henric Svanberg on 1 January 2019 as chairman of BP Plc board of directors, and Bernard Looney succeeded Bob Dudley on 5 February 2020 as chief executive. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, BP claimed that it would "accelerate the transition to a lower carbon economy and energy system" after announcing that the company had to write down $17.5 billion for the second quarter of 2020.

On 29 June 2020, BP sold its petrochemicals unit to Ineos for $5 billion. The business was focused on aromatics and acetyls. It had interests in 14 plants in Asia, Europe and the U.S., and achieved production of 9.7 million metric tons in 2019. On 30 June 2020, BP sold all its Alaska upstream operations and interests, including interests in Prudhoe Bay Oil Field, to Hilcorp for $5.6 billion. On 14 December 2020, it sold its 49% stake in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Harvest Alaska.

In September 2020, BP formed a partnership with Equinor to develop offshore wind and announced it will acquire 50% non-operating stake in the Empire Wind off New York and Beacon Wind off Massachusetts offshore wind farms. The deal is expected to be completed at the first half of 2021. In December 2020, BP acquired a majority stake in Finite Carbon, the largest forest carbon offsets developer in the United States.

In response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, BP announced that it would sell its 19.75% stake in Rosneft, although no timeline was announced. At the time of BP's decision, Rosneft's activities accounted for around half of BP's oil and gas reserves and a third of its production. BP's decision came after the British government expressed concern about BP's involvement in Russia. However, BP remained a Rosneft shareholder throughout the whole 2022 year, which caused some criticism from the Ukrainian president's office.

In October 2022, BP announced that it would be acquiring Archaea Energy Inc., a renewable natural gas producer, for $4.1 billion. In December 2022, it was announced BP had completed the acquisition of Archaea Energy Inc. for $3.3 billion. In November 2022, the company announced a large increase in profit for the period from July to September due to the high fuel prices caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In February 2023, BP reported record annual profits, on a replacement cost basis, for the year 2022. On that basis, 2022 profits were more than double than in 2021, and they were also the biggest profits in the whole 114-year long history of BP. The same month, BP agreed to acquire truck stop service company TravelCenters of America for $1.3 billion. The purchase was completed in May 2023.

After 10 years of force majeure, BP, Eni and Sonatrach resumed exploration in their blocks in the Ghadames Basin (A-B) and offshore Block C in August 2023, continuing their contract obligations.

BP increased its dividend by 10% year-on-year in early 2024 and accelerated share buybacks. It had already announced $1.75 billion before reporting first quarter results and intended to announce a $3.5 billion share buyback in the first half of the year.

Murray Auchincloss became CEO in January 2024. In June 2024, BP announced the acquisition of Bunge Bioenergia from Bunge Global for US$ 1.4 billion. The purchase will increase BP's ethanol production to 50,000 barrels per day.

In November 2024, BP and partners announced its plan to invest $7 billion to a carbon capture and gas field development in Indonesia 's West Papua Province that has the potential of almost 3 trillion cubic feet of gas resource. Production plans are expected to start in 2028 in the Tangguh gas field.

In January 2025, BP announced that it planned to cut 4,700 staff and 3,000 contractors, more than 5% of its total workforce.

In February 2025, BP declared that it would cut renewable energy investments and focus on increasing oil and gas production. The plans will see an increase in investment in the two fossil fuels of around 20% to $10 billion per year, while decreasing planned funding for renewables by more than £5 billion.

The decision undermines the emissions and fossil fuel reductions targets set out in the Paris Climate Agreement, with Greenpeace UK stating that BP's decision to double-down on fossil fuel production was "proof that fossil fuel companies can't or won't be part of climate crisis solutions". BP's share price fell by 2% in the hours that followed the announcement.

Bloomberg reported in May 2025 that rival Shell plc was considering an acquisition of BP.

In July 2025, the company announced the appointment of Albert Manifold as its next chairman from 1 October 2025, replacing Helge Lund. In August 2025 the company announced its greatest oil and gas field discovery in the last 25 years. The discovery was in the Bumerangue prospect, located about 400 km offshore in Brazil's deepwater Santos Basin.

In December 2025, BP announced the stepping down of Murray Auchincloss and the appointment of Meg O'Neill as its new chief executive effective from April 2026. She will be the first external hire and first female CEO of a major global oil producer. She will also lead the shift in focus back to oil and gas following Murray Auchincloss's resignation. The company also announced that Carol Howle would serve as interim CEO.

In December 2025, the company announced it agreed to sell a 65 per cent stake in Castrol to Stonepeak for around $6 billion. As part of the deal, BP will retain a 35 per cent stake in the company for the next two years, after which it will be free to sell. BP said the proceeds will be used to reduce its debt.

On 1 April 2026, O'Neill took up her post. O'Neill joined from Woodside Energy with a mandate to streamline the company's executive structure and accelerate oil and gas production growth.

In May 2026, the company's board unanimously decided to remove Manifold from his post as chairman with immediate effect, due to 'serious' concerns about his conduct, including 'bullying' and 'overbearing' behaviour. Ian Tyler was appointed interim chair, and BP announced that it would begin a search for a permanent chair.