2023-09-13 08:24:00
Bernard Looney is accused of having hidden personal relationships he had with several colleagues. He resigned from his post on Tuesday.
By LL with AFP
Published on 09/13/2023 at 8:24 a.m.
British oil giant BP is rocked by an internal affair. Its general director, Bernard Looney, is accused of having hidden “personal relationships” with several colleagues. The group announced its resignation on Tuesday “with immediate effect”. “BP announces that Bernard Looney has informed the group that he is resigning from his position as general manager with immediate effect” after admitting “not having been completely transparent,” the group said in a press release. Current financial director Murray Auchincloss will take over in the interim.
Bernard Looney can be credited with leading one of Britain’s largest groups through the pandemic, which caused oil prices and economic activity to collapse, and then the Russian invasion. of Ukraine, which has conversely caused hydrocarbon prices to soar and inflated the accounts of oil companies.
In its press release, the hydrocarbon giant indicates that it became aware in May 2022 of “allegations […] relating to Bernard Looney’s behavior regarding personal relationships with colleagues within the group. An internal investigation was launched, during which the managing director, aged 53 and who took charge of the group in 2020, admitted “a small number of old relationships with colleagues before becoming managing director”. “No violation of the group’s code of conduct has been noted,” specifies BP. “But new allegations of a similar nature” have emerged “recently” and “today (Tuesday), Bernard Looney informed the group that he recognized that he had not been completely transparent in his previous statements”. “The group has strong values and the board of directors expects everyone within it to behave in accordance with these values. All leaders in particular are expected to act as role models and exercise good judgment in order to gain the trust of others,” BP further emphasizes.
Wave of resignations or evictions
Of Irish origin, Bernard Looney joined BP as an engineer in 1991 and spent his entire career there, occupying various operational and management positions in several countries, including the United States, Vietnam and the United Kingdom. He started his mandate by emphasizing the energy transition, promising to lead the company towards carbon neutrality, before the group put the brakes on its environmental ambitions in February, hoping to boost its share price and attract investors.
BP then indicated that it planned to increase its profits by 2030 by investing more in both renewable energy and hydrocarbons. Like the other majors in the sector, BP benefited a year ago from the surge in gas and oil prices, in a market disrupted by the post-pandemic economic recovery and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A year later, prices have fallen, although they remain at high levels. BP saw its net profit divided by five over one year in the second quarter, to $1.8 billion.
Bernard Looney’s departure comes on the heels of a wave of resignations or ousters in the British business world for sexual misconduct, notably within Britain’s largest employers’ organisation, the CBI, but also at the retailer Tesco, among others.
Bernard Looney took the helm of BP almost ten years after the worst disaster in its history, the oil spill caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon platform that the group was operating to drill in very deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico. He had been part of the crisis unit urgently sent to the site to try to stop the oil bleeding.
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Trying to embody a certain modernity, he regularly uploaded his Instagram account to communicate on BP policies or his meetings with the teams of the oil “major” around the world.
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