The surprise appointment of BP’s third chief executive in a tumultuous five years reflects the embattled fossil fuel producer’s need for profound change. The hiring of Meg O’Neill appears to offer exactly that.
The 55-year-old from Boulder, Colorado, is the first female head of a major oil company, and the first “outsider” to be hired to a position usually reserved for company veterans. She joins from the Australian oil and gas company Woodside, where she took up her first chief executive role only four years ago.
While BP was struggling to maintain its value amid a failing green strategy, leadership changes and swirling rumours that it could fall prey to takeover, O’Neill weathered the energy crisis to lead Woodside’s merger with BHP Group’s petroleum arm, which doubled the company’s fossil fuel production and valued the company at $40bn (£30bn).
BP presents a challenge on a different scale. But O’Neill is likely to draw on experience near the centre of the US oil company ExxonMobil to meet it.
She spent 23 years at the $500bn company, joining as a graduate before rising through the ranks to become executive adviser to the Exxon boss Rex Tillerson before his nomination to serve as secretary of state in the first Trump administration. She advised Tillerson’s replacement, Darren Wood, after he joined the White House before taking on responsibility for the company’s projects in Africa.
Her new role could come with a hefty pay increase. O’Neill earned a pay packet of $7.45m for her last year as Woodside’s CEO, up from $4.9m the year before. Meanwhile her immediate BP predecessor, Murray Auchincloss, took home £5.4m ($7.2m) last year after taking a 30% pay cut owing to missed targets and investor pressure.
A ‘seismic’ change
“This is clearly a high-profile hire, and probably some of the change that BP shareholders have been looking for,” said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners.
O’Neill has been frequently described by industry observers as “hard-nosed” and a “no-nonsense” straight-talker. But her rapid rise to become the most powerful woman in the energy industry has not been without its difficulties.
The executive, who has a daughter with her wife, Vicky Hayes, told the West Australian newspaper that her journey coming out as a gay woman in the oil industry had its “ups and downs”.
“But one of the things that has been important to me since I joined Woodside is to be out and visible because I do recognise the importance of those visible role models,” she said. “I think it is important for me as a senior gay woman in the industry to be visible so young, queer people can look up and say: ‘Look, there’s somebody like me. I should be comfortable bringing myself to work’,” O’Neill added.
She has also faced fierce criticism from climate activists, including a protest at her home in Perth where protesters had planned to damage her fence and garage door with paint as part of a “publicity stunt”.
“This was not a ‘harmless’ protest,” she said in a statement at the time. “It was designed to threaten me, my partner and our daughter in our home. Such acts by extremists should be condemned by anyone who respects the law.”
Return to fossil fuels
O’Neill emerged as a focus for Australian climate activists after setting out plans for Woodside to increase sales by 50% by 2032 to 300m barrels of oil equivalent a year. The target, and her resistance in the face of protest position her well for BP’s push away from green investments and back to fossil fuel production.
Woodside is investing billions in major projects producing and shipping liquified natural gas (LNG), including the $17.5bn Louisiana LNG project, and has successfully lobbied for the north-west Shelf LNG processing facility, on the Burrup peninsula, be given a 50-year extended licence. The climate scientist Prof Peter Newman condemned the project as Australia’s biggest ever contribution to global heating.
O’Neill has condemned young people who oppose fossil fuels, suggesting they are hypocritical for also freely using tech and ordering cheap online consumer goods.
At the gas industry’s annual conference in May, she said: “It’s been a fascinating journey to watch the discussion, particularly among young people who have this very ideological, almost zealous view of ‘fossil fuels bad, renewables good’, that are happily plugging in their devices, ordering things from [online fast-fashion stores] Shein and Temu – having, you know, one little thing shipped to their house without any sort of recognition of the energy and carbon impact of their actions.
“That human impact and the consumer’s role in driving energy demand and emissions absolutely is a missing space in the conversation,” she said.
For O’Neill, this conversation over the future of fossil fuels will soon play out on the global stage.
