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BP’s next chief executive Meg O’Neill is stepping into one of the toughest jobs in global energy: the first outsider to lead the British company, now charged with reshaping a sprawling business and a corporate culture that has attracted criticism from within the oil industry.
The 54-year-old American — who will replace Murray Auchincloss in April — has led Woodside Energy since 2021, having previously climbed the ranks at ExxonMobil.
Woodside is Australia’s largest energy company. But the Perth-based group is a very different proposition from BP, with less than a tenth of its daily oil and gas production and a far narrower business model.
While Woodside is a pure-play oil and gas producer, BP spans the full energy value chain, from exploration and production to refining, trading and the sale of fuel through more than 21,000 petrol stations worldwide — businesses in which O’Neill has limited direct experience.
She is, however, no stranger to hostile environments.
O’Neill has become a lightning rod for climate activists in Australia after criticising regulation of the fossil fuel industry and sharply scaling back Woodside’s spending on lower-carbon energy, even after shareholders rejected the company’s climate plans in 2024 for being too modest.
In 2023, her home in Perth was targeted twice: once by thieves who stole a Maserati sports car and a Jeep Cherokee while her family were inside, and again by climate activists who planned to deface the property with paint in a dawn protest.
O’Neill later said the climate protests had left her “shaken, fearful and distressed” and amounted to an “unacceptable escalation in activity by an extremist group”.
Despite this, colleagues say she remained a prominent and influential voice in Australia’s increasingly polarised debate over the energy transition.
Ahead of federal elections this year, she warned that regulation, labour costs and taxes meant the country “loses on every front” to the US. “She is a real rationalist,” said a former Woodside adviser, adding that O’Neill resisted committing to net zero targets, instead describing them as an “aspiration”.
Kevin Morrison, an analyst at the Institute for Economics, Energy and Financial Analysis, an energy transition-focused think-tank, described her demeanour as “hard-nosed — doesn’t budge, no-nonsense”.
Saul Kavonic, senior energy analyst at MST Financial, said O’Neill was a “low-ego leader” who would “steady the BP ship, address cultural issues and return BP to making money rather than headlines”.
BP’s critics accuse it of being bloated and uncompetitive, with an internal culture that at times has resembled a government bureaucracy rather than a multinational company.
Speaking about O’Neill’s appointment, BP chair Albert Manifold said he wanted a “simpler, leaner and more profitable” company and that “increased rigour and diligence are required”.
“Meg is seen as a credible alternative [to Auchincloss] who conforms to the zeitgeist on the energy transition,” said one shareholder.
During her tenure, O’Neill transformed Woodside through two major acquisitions. An all-share merger with BHP Petroleum in 2021 lifted daily production from about 24,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day to nearly 160,000.
That was followed by a $1.2bn cash deal in 2024 for Tellurian, owner of a proposed liquefied natural gas project in Louisiana, which Woodside subsequently approved.
In a farewell message to staff, O’Neill said she was proud of Woodside’s “world-class” operations, citing “high reliability and low unit production cost”.
Yet production costs remain broadly unchanged since the BHP merger, and the company’s shares have struggled.
Woodside’s total shareholder return over the past five years has been 42 per cent, according to Accela Research, compared with an industry average of 212 per cent.
“Woodside’s share price has underperformed all of the majors over the last five years materially, including BP,” said Biraj Borkhataria at RBC Capital Markets.
Axel Dalman, an Accela analyst, said O’Neill’s record “fits with BP’s recent refocus on oil and gas”. What is less clear, he added, was whether she would be able to deliver on BP’s other newly emphasised priority: higher shareholder returns.
BP said on Wednesday that Auchincloss was being replaced after less than two years in the job, although he will stay on in an advisory capacity until the end of next year. During his turbulent period in charge, the company reversed its push into green energy and pivoted back to oil and gas.
Carol Howle, BP head of trading, will run the company until O’Neill takes over.
Additional reporting by Emma Dunkley in London