BP, the London energy giant, said late Wednesday that it would replace the company’s 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, who resigned in 2023 over failing to disclose personal relationships with other employees.
As BP’s first female chief executive and a rare outside appointment, Ms. O’Neill 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 Bernstein, the Wall Street research firm, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday. “Meg O’Neill has considerable industry experience and strong technical engineering skills.”
Ms. O’Neill is a well-known industry figure who has headed Woodside since 2021. A native of the United States, Ms. O’Neill also spent 23 years at Exxon Mobil.
The executive shake-up seemed to come in haste.
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 had been appointed chair in July, he had “expressed my openness to step down were an appropriate leader identified.”
Stanley Reed reports on energy, the environment and the Middle East for The Times from London. He has been a journalist for more than four decades.
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