Bob Dudley steps down as chief executive of BP

BP chief executive Bob Dudley is to step down as chief executive after a decade running the oil giant.

Dudley, who has spent 40 years at the oil company, is one of the highest paid chief executives in Britain. He became chief executive in 2010 when Tony Hayward left after the Deepwater Horizon disaster that cost the lives of 11 workers and led to America’s biggest offshore oil spill.

“Bob has dedicated his whole career to the service of this industry,” Helge Lund, chairman of BP, said.

Dudley said: “It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve this company and work in this industry for the past four decades.”

Bernard Looney, chief executive of the upstream business, will succeed Dudley. Looney joined BP in 1991 as a drilling engineer and took over as the head of the group’s oil and gas exploration, development and production business worldwide in April 2016.