BP will cut its senior leadership team to about 120 positions from 250 in an effort to make the firm more “nimble”, a news report said.
Many veterans who served on former boss Bob Dudley’s management team will exit over the next few months, Reuters reported, citing emails to staff dated May 14.
“We expect the reinvented bp to be smaller and nimbler. We have already started by removing a layer of management at Tier 1 and 2,” Current CEO Bernard Looney said, according to Reuters.
Mr Looney revealed in February that the London-headquartered company would “reinvent” itself in a bid to achieve its ambitions, including eradicating emissions from its own operations by 2050.
Its longstanding, three-pronged upstream, downstream and “other businesses” structure is being replaced with four divisions — production and operations, customers and products, gas and low carbon, and innovation and engineering.
The changes reported by Reuters mean in a many cases a whole management layer being stripped out.
High-profile departures include Michael Townsend, BP’s regional president for the Middle East, and Hesham Mekawi, president for North Africa, the report said.
BP told its global workforce of more than 70,000 people in March that their jobs would be safe over the subsequent three months while the firm grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic and oil price downturn.
The appointment of Gordon Birrell as head of the production and operations business was announced in February.
He hails from Fife and had a stint as business unit leader for BP’s mature producing fields in the North Sea.
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