What happened
On December 18, 2025, BP announced Murray Auchincloss would step down as chief executive the same day after less than two years in the job, with supply and trading executive Carol Howle serving as interim until Woodside Energy's Meg O'Neill took over on April 1. O'Neill is BP's fourth CEO in six years, under a newly appointed chair, Albert Manifold.
The churn traces back to Bernard Looney, chief executive from early 2020, who 'had sought to transform the oil major into a green energy giant but came under investor pressure amid share underperformance'. He left in January 2024 for failing to disclose a relationship with a colleague. Auchincloss, promoted from CFO, reversed the strategy and refocused on the core oil and gas business, launching a cost-cutting program and a string of oil discoveries that eased the pressure.
The verdict from analysts was blunt. Stephen Isaacs of Alvine Capital, which holds a position in BP: the company 'rather kind of drank a bit too much Kool Aid on the whole energy transition and neglected its core businesses'. BP had reported declining annual profits in both 2023 and 2024, spent part of 2025 batting off takeover rumors — Shell denied being in talks — and its shares were up 15% year-to-date but only 21% over five years.
What it cost
Underperformance against peers: declining annual profits in 2023 and 2024, a full U-turn on green pledges, and four CEOs in six years.
Why it happened
A strategy-level error with a multi-year paper trail: green pivot, investor revolt, U-turn, and a revolving CEO door.
Concrete costs on record: two straight years of declining profit and chronic share underperformance against peers.
The strategic reversal is admitted implicitly — the reset back to oil and gas was pitched as 'getting back to basics'.
Named decision chain from Looney's transformation to O'Neill's hiring, all in third-party reporting.
The lesson
A strategy that outruns what your investors bought you for gets reversed twice: first the pivot, then the pivot away — and every reversal consumes a CEO.
Aftermath
O'Neill, who spent 23 years at ExxonMobil and built Woodside's LNG focus, is expected to 'hold the line' on upstream oil and gas — she has argued customers are unwilling to pay for climate-friendlier products. Analysts expect Manifold's hands-on chairmanship to accelerate the reset; takeover chatter is likely to resurface, though Quilter Cheviot puts the odds of a major deal lower than earlier in the year.
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