BP Names New Boss After Its C.E.O. Steps Down

Meg O’Neill of Australia’s Woodside Energy will lead the British energy giant, replacing Murray Auchincloss, who will exit after less than two years in the role.

BP has long been viewed as a laggard in the oil industry, plagued by executive turmoil and shifts in strategy. Now, the company appears to be embarking on a new course once again.

The British energy giant said late Wednesday that it would replace its chief executive, Murray Auchincloss, with Meg O’Neill, an industry veteran who leads Woodside Energy, Australia’s largest oil and gas company.

The change comes after a long period of investor discontent over BP’s performance, particularly an ill-fated move into renewable energy under Mr. Auchincloss’s predecessor, Bernard Looney. Mr. Looney resigned in 2023 over failing to disclose personal relationships with other employees.

Ms. O’Neill, as BP’s first female chief executive and the first outside appointment, will be a change for the energy giant that is likely to be well-received by investors.

“Woodside’s loss is BP’s gain,” Neil Beveridge, an analyst at the research firm Bernstein, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. “Meg O’Neill has considerable industry experience and strong technical engineering skills.”

Mr. Beveridge added that Ms. O’Neill “is known for her down to earth, straight-talking style and practical decision-making.”

Ms. O’Neill is a respected industry figure who has headed Woodside since 2021. A native of the United States and a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she also spent 23 years at Exxon Mobil.

BP’s executive shake-up seemed to come as a surprise. Mr. Auchincloss will step down on Thursday, but Ms. O’Neill will not take the reins at BP until April. In the meantime, Carol Howie, an executive vice president at the company, will serve as interim chief executive.

Reached by telephone on Thursday, Ms. O’Neill said she would be leaving Woodside “by the end of the day today.” She declined to comment further, saying she was in her “gardening leave period” between jobs.

Mr. Auchincloss said in a statement that, after Albert Manifold took over as chairman in October, he had “expressed my openness to step down were an appropriate leader identified.”

Even though Mr. Auchincloss had shifted away from Mr. Looney’s strategy of reducing oil and gas production and investing heavily in renewables, there were questions about how long he would last in the top job.

Having served as Mr. Looney’s chief financial officer, he may have been seen as too closely associated with the company’s past failures.

BP remains under pressure from shareholders including Elliott Investment Management, an activist hedge fund that is said to be pushing the company to focus on its most profitable businesses.

The arrival of Mr. Manifold, a former building materials chief executive, as chairman may have doomed Mr. Auchincloss, analysts say.

In a statement announcing the chief executive change, Mr. Manifold said that “increased rigor and diligence are required to make the necessary transformative changes to maximize value for our shareholders.”

As the first outsider to run BP, Ms. O’Neill will bring a fresh eye to evaluating the company’s personnel and properties, analysts said.

Other analysts worried that ousting Mr. Auchincloss came too soon and would cause further turmoil at the company.

“It is a little surprising to see the chairman willing to make a major change in such a short period of time, given he has little direct oil and gas experience,” Biraj Borkhataria, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, an investment bank, wrote in a note on Thursday.

Mr. Borkhataria added that BP had been “impaired” by selling oil fields at market lows and buying renewables at market highs.

The executive change may sharpen BP’s focus over time, but “it will clearly create short-term turbulence and more uncertainty for now,” he wrote.

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